Status Report, 11 April 2021

Goals from week of Mar 22

• Finalize move date from California
• Install railings on 3rd floor

Accomplishments

• Move date is locked. Packing will be April 21, and truck leaves April 22. We’ll be moving a small load to Pearl St. right away. The remainder of the Los Altos house will be in storage in CA until we’re ready for it here in Pgh. (cost is about the same in both places for storage).
• Books fully reconciled for 2018. 2019 and 2020 are underway and should be finished in a day or so. (Thanks, Mom)
• Framing at Mintwood is on the second floor.

Corp Update

• Mom completed her visit to Pgh. We were able to sort out the big challenges with QuickBooks, and so now it’s on me to reconcile each year. 2018 is completed, including all of the heavy lifting of correcting the way loans and assets were set up. Working on 2019 and 2020 now. I expect these will go quickly.
• Orange Ave rental showings have accelerated. This weekend we received one actual application, and we had two other couples who toured the house and said they wanted to rent it (and requested applications). So at this point we are expecting 3 viable tenants by Tuesday, and will likely close out shortly thereafter (though Kathryn continues to show the house just in case.)
• Hatfield deposit and first month rent has been received. These tenants are very much “on the ball” – a joy to work with. (I should write a post on “How to be a great applicant/ Tenant”)
• I will be leaving for CA on the 14th. Per the above schedule, I’ll have a week of packing before the truck arrives. Then I’ll spend a couple of days tidying up / patching walls, etc. On Sunday, I’ll start the drive back to Pgh with Archie in the car as a my travelling companion.

Mintwood St

• Demolition:  Work is complete.  See blog post
• Roofing. Had another site visit this week, which was a big positive. We were able to agree on how to simplify the scaffold requirements, which saves about $6K from the cost of the job. Expecting his bid by ~April 15.
• Carpenters are making excellent progress. Except for the kitchen, the first floor is complete. Stairs from 1st to 2nd floor have been leveled and are rock solid. This will require rebuilding the beautiful wall that was under them, but I think I know a good finish carpenter (ME!).
  The kitchen is the only part of the first floor that isn’t over the basement – just a crawl space. As a result, we’ve left the subfloor open until the mechanicals are all installed. Team is now working on the second floor. Layout was completed on Friday and they’ve started framing things in. Second floor will also require repair to the joists hacked by the old plumbers, and also filling in the maid’s stairs. These are non-trivial tasks. Anticipating at least one more large lumber order.
• Insulation (no change since 3/14) Need to source insulation, as we will be insulating a lot of the exterior walls and all of the roof.  Likely to be spray foam in the roof, and batts along the walls. Probably start sourcing after I’ve sorted out the roofing repair.
• HVAC HVAC guy is coming on Tuesday for a walk-thru.
• Plumbers:  Talked to Matt Mertz. They’re going to try to get someone out Mon/ Tuesday to look at the Kitchen and figure out when they’ll come work on that.
• Electrical: Still trying to get Rich out to look at the place for a formal bid, and to see what he wants to do ASAP vs. later.
• Plaster:  (no change since 3/14) I have a fallback, but will be looking for better options. 

Next Steps

• Framing continues.
• Source a roofing repair

Pearl St.

Next Steps
This week:  

• Continue working the Trello list. Priority to the upstairs railings.

Goals for week of April 11

• As much as I can on 3rd floor railings
• Head to California to pack out!
• Sign a tenant for 580 Orange Ave.