Older home remodeling in Arleta, Los Angeles County
Remodeling Older Houses in Arleta
A remodel of an older Arleta house starts in the crawlspace: sill bolts, cripple walls and old pipe, then the panel, plaster tests and a written scope.
Before anything else at an older Arleta house, we go under the floor with a flashlight and a moisture meter. The crawlspace shows how the house sits on its foundation, whether the sill is bolted down, whether the cripple walls have any bracing and where old galvanized pipe has started to weep. What turns up down there sets the order of the remodel above it.
Next, the panel and the plaster
Out of the crawlspace, we open the electrical panel and trace circuits to see whether knob-and-tube or ungrounded cable still feeds the rooms. The attic shows those old runs plainly where they cross the joists. Plaster is tapped by hand for loose sections, and samples of paint and plaster go to a lab ahead of any demolition. Doors that bind and cracks running from window corners are noted on the plan, since either can point to framing that has moved and may need an engineer to look at it.
Permit and nearby work
Once the findings become a scope, LADBS reviews the drawings, as Arleta lies within the City of Los Angeles. Pacoima, Panorama City, Mission Hills, North Hills and Van Nuys fall under the same department. San Fernando is a separate city with its own building office, so a job there is filed with that office. The visit, the written scope and the order of work are alike in each place, and the kept trim, doors and windows are listed room by room so nothing original is lost by accident.
What we can do for a house in Arleta
Whole-house work leads, and every other service is available for the same house.
Planning work on a house in Arleta?
Tell us about it. We will walk through the house and send a written scope.