@Ron Resnick how is your room renovation coming along? Apologies if I missed many posts however you looked to have one very impressive project ongoing there and I'm also curious if you are still on your quest for your destination speaker or if you've finalized on "the one".
The listening room renovation is part of overall house repairs, and both continue to proceed, albeit slowly and haltingly.
Putting carpet in the rear 2/3 of the listening room is now on hold pending the initiation, permit approval and build-out of a small extension to the length of Tinka's home theater in an adjacent room but with common carpet.
As an example of why this project seemingly never ends, or actually will never end, conduit tubes in the wall between the listening room and this adjacent room (round openings on each side of the wall fitted with plastic tubes) which I will use to allow interconnects to pass between the two rooms were dry-walled over a few weeks ago. I hired the wrong general contractor. Tinka advised me to replace him three years ago, but every step of the way I have thought we have "just a few more months to go."
Also, a City of Los Angeles building inspector who has visited the house several times decided a few months ago that we must build a small concrete landing pad on an inaccessible and unused and unusable side of the exterior deck. This week, out of the blue, he now decided to require a whole exterior staircase that ascends from the small pad to the street above, even though one would be prevented from walking upright on such a staircase by a cantilevered bathroom which blocks the way. He is demanding an egress to the street above which would require interruption of an existing low wall and installation of an unattractive gate.
The competence of, and the meticulousness of compliance with the current building code of, this particular inspector are nice were it not for the incredibly frustrating irony that the whole reason the house needed structural, waterproofing and interior and exterior repairs in the first place is because the City of Los Angeles building inspector assigned to the original construction of the house in 2004 was either incompetent or literally criminally bribed. Among other construction defects we found raw, exposed duplex electrical outlets not in boxes under wall-to-wall carpet; underground piles of sharp Rebar pushed against the waterproofing layer of the retaining wall which punctured such waterproofing layer; a plywood roof with no waterproofing layer underneath it; a rear deck with uncompacted soil (which allowed the deck literally to crack and collapse); most windows were trapezoids and leaking; and an under concrete slab drainage system the permit for which was signed off by the inspector as being built but which
never actually was built. Among the contractors and attorneys who examined the situation the consensus conclusion was criminal bribery.
The house is being repaired/renovated in almost every way, and will be a much tighter and more secure and better built structure than it ever would have been, even if it had been built right in the first place. We have not changed the floor plan or built additional rooms or significantly increased the square footage of the house, but at least we will have essentially a new house. For just us three animals the house was big enough to begin with.
But, as you might imagine, it is quite frustrating literally to pay twice for the same house. I must be the only person who bought a house in Los Angeles in 2006 and who is under water on it today.
In retrospect, the repair/renovation project made no economic sense. But we love the location, the street, the property and the view -- and the renovated house. So as long as we live there essentially forever, it is okay.
I selected for speakers Gryphon Pendragons several years ago. These speakers have continued to be stored with infinite patience by Jason Lord of The Source AV in Torrance, California.
