Day 94-98

Let me get the tile business out of the way first. I kind of feel like I’ve been working with a used car salesman—by the name of David. In my previous post I mentioned we told David we’d have the tub surround tiled by his tile guy and we’d do the floor ourselves. He said that was too small of a job and the tile guy wouldn’t do it. At that time I said we were thinking about doing the tile ourselves. A day or two later he called and asked what we were going to do about the tile and I said we were definitely doing the tile ourselves. He then said that if the floor’s the only issue the tile guy would do the tub surround. I told him he had already told me he wouldn’t do that, and he said it doesn’t matter to the tile guy. To me this is why the used car salesman comparison fits. I feel as though he was seeing if we’d cave, and when we didn’t then we got what we originally wanted. It seems so odd to me—especially over a tile job.

We found out another dumb twist in City codes. Apparently the ceiling of the first floor has to be insulated and drywalled. We were planning on doing that anyway, but the kicker is that there can’t be any open areas. That means Lazaro and Arturo had to build a frame around all of the plumbing. We probably lost about 6 inches in height along one of the walls. Oh well.


We’re still being held up by the inspection. To get it resolved we had a new survey done on our lot—to prove the second story has not moved. It was only $250 and if David would have told us this was the issue two and a half weeks ago (and that it would take over two weeks to get the issue resolved) we would have just done the survey when the inspector told us to. I still think the inspector was unfair, but at the same time we didn’t know the survey was the issue. We thought the roof was—which is why they wanted a survey I guess. Per my neighbors’ daughter’s advice we will now always get the inspection reports to find out what’s not passing.

On a positive note, the inspector came by today. Hopefully since it was the same inspector that means we’ll pass this time. I was very friendly to him (well, not that friendly). He seemed somewhat taken aback at my pleasant “good morning, sir”. It made me feel a little sorry for him that he’s probably not usually greeted warmly (but only a wee bit sorry).

The laundry room is completely framed in now. It’s pretty exciting. I can’t wait to do laundry out there. I know that’s a foreign concept to my family in Iowa, but except for January and February it’s great to be outside. To Iowans it’s probably balmy in January and February with high temperatures in the 40’s and 50’s.



ACL Fest starts today, so I’m going to forget all about the garage project and enjoy some music this weekend!

Day 90-93

Lazaro and Arturo showed up on Friday (day 91) around 2:00 and got a lot done before day's end. I should also note that they finished the siding at the end of the day of my last post. Friday they started setting the posts for the laundry room. I assume all of the posts are set. Seeing that made me feel pretty good about the project.


Of course I can't not write about the things I feel bad about. Come on, this is a renovation project (officially entering month three, I might add). For example, the tile. Yes, I'm still stuck on the tile situation. Now I'm of the mind that we should install the tile ourselves because it will save us around $1500 in labor. My dream of penny tile might actually come true. If we don't do the best job installing it at least that's on us instead of my contractor and the tile guy. I originally told our contractor we'd have the tile guy do the shower and we'd do the floor and he said, "No, he won't do that. That's too small of a job." I guess we'll do the whole thing. By "we" I mean Brad because I'm not the best tile person in the world--although I do aspire to it!

The fun stuff is starting to arrive on our doorstep. We ordered a great kitchen faucet off of overstock.com (something like 70% off). I also received the bathroom light fixture (although the shade is backordered) and toilet paper holder (exciting). This morning I ordered exterior lights thanks to Renovation Hardware's big lighting sale. We were originally going to order some amazing barn lights off of barnlightelectric.com. They seemed really inexpensive until I figured out the shade and fixture were sold separately. They're still not a bad price, but considering we wrote a check yesterday for the extra plumbing work we had to have done, $89 a light seemed better than $189 a light. So, if you want a gorgeous farm-style gooseneck light, barnlightelectric.com.

Day 87-89

I’m remembering back to the time when David forgot to install two of our slabs on either side of the garage foundation. I believe I said I would have lost all confidence in him if it hadn’t been for the fact that he had worked on two of our friends’ homes and did an amazing job. As of today I’d like to scratch that and say instead that I should have gone with my gut feeling back then.

Here’s the most recent issue with David. We got a tile bid that was almost $500 more than what I expected (from the research I did online and knowing the square footage and price of tile). My online research said the cost of laying tile is between $5 and $10 a square foot. Based on the bid we got from the tile guy he was charging almost $15 a square foot for the floor (and in his defense I did choose a tricky tile, but doesn’t that mean $10?). I brought this up with David and told him how I came to my conclusion (which I’m not sure why I had to defend my argument). He had the strangest response. He said that if we didn’t want to go with his tile guy we could fine our own. He said it would be a pain for him and it wouldn’t be a good tile job, but that we could find a different tile guy ourselves. Our question is: what are we paying this guy for? Isn’t he our contractor? If we don’t like a bid, isn’t it his job to get another one?

We fumed over this all day yesterday (day 88). Not only did he tell me he wouldn’t find us another tile guy, he also used some lame excuses for the price. He said because it was a small job the tile guy needed to charge more. He said on a bigger job there’d be more room to lay the tile out and in a small space it’s more difficult. I understand a teeny tiny piece of that argument (perhaps there’s more cutting), but if you’re laying tile in a larger space you have to buy more tile, so do you actually save any money? And do you really save time, or do you just do less cutting? Anyway, the excuse didn’t fly with us.

As of this morning David has called and said I can either pick out a tile that’s in stock and less tricky to install (because he claims there’s a $100 charge on any tile that has to be shipped) or he can give me the name of some tile guys. There goes my dream of installing penny tile on the floor. If this was in our home I would find another tile guy, but since this is just the garage I’ll save the penny tile for the house and go find something in stock at the tile store. Basically I’m saving money by picking out cheaper tile—instead of getting the tile guy to shave a couple hundred off his bid. It doesn’t seem very fair to me, but I’d rather spend time picking out new tile instead of being a contractor for a tile guy my contractor won’t work with. Ridiculous!

I figured out yesterday that in the past 12 working days (this excludes Labor Day), Lazaro and Arturo have been here 2.5 days. Today marks day 13 of the working days and they showed up around 12:30, so maybe by the end of the day it will be 3 days in 13 working days. That’s about 23% of the time that they’re here. I certainly don’t blame Lazaro for this. It sounds as though David has him working on another job. If this pace keeps up we won’t finish until Thanksgiving—or Christmas! Please, no!

This morning we also got an update on the garage inspections; specifically the inspection that didn’t pass a week and a half ago. David wrote a letter arguing his case (that the second story/roof is grandfathered in) to the next guy up at the City. He sent it last Tuesday (9^th) and has left two messages with him. He hasn’t heard anything. He then asked someone above that guy to look into the issue because until we pass inspection we can’t get our electrical and plumbing rough-in inspections. Until we get those inspections we can’t insulate and we can’t sheetrock. Basically we could be at a stand-still once Lazaro is done putting up siding (which I expect to take a couple days). That makes me wonder…where are the garage doors?! I haven’t asked David about them in a week. Although if I did ask him he’d just tell me we don’t want them yet, but yes, they were ordered.

Day 83-86

I had a talk with David about the windows. In all honesty, the mix-up itself was not a big deal. For me the big deal was that he didn’t take responsibility for the mistake and said it was our fault. I’m just not thrilled with that at all. When I spoke with him I said something such as, “What’s going on with the windows?” He restated the mix-up was our fault and I said it wasn’t and I had read through our e-mails to figure that out. He said he had too and couldn’t figure out why we changed the window size. Instead of telling him I had the e-mail to prove it I just said he should have given Lazaro the window order so he would have had the correct sizes. After I said that he told me it wasn’t a big deal anyway. (I agree, but why can’t he take responsibility?) I told him it was a big deal to us because of the time we’re being billed to have it fixed. He said something along the lines that it took Lazaro ten minutes to make the window openings smaller. I said he had been working on the windows for a half day the previous day and three hours that morning. David said he was doing other things to the windows. At that point I said goodbye and went back to work. He knew I was not happy with him.


Day 84 started and ended in about an hour. Hurricane Ike was on his way, so the day before I asked if David would install the metal support pole that had been in our garage the past couple days. I said I knew Austin would probably be fine, but just in case Ike made a turn I’d feel better having the support in place. Lazaro showed up, installed the pole, tidied up around the site so things wouldn’t blow away, and then left.

Below is a photo of the lovely metal support pole and all the stuff we moved into the garage in case we got winds from Ike. Included is our neighbor's scooter.

Day 81-82

This has not been a good week as far as feeling good about the project and that our contractor is on top of things. First off, when I found out we were having a site inspection the first thing I said to Brad was, “Why would they have the inspection when we don’t even have the support pole in the garage bays yet?” Currently there’s a temporary wooden support in place of the permanent metal pole the structural engineer put in his plans (last June). David had told us the pole had been ordered after the slab had been poured (last July). Lo and behold, yesterday I got an e-mail from David with an attachment for the pole receipt (placed the same day!). Therefore, the pole was not ordered in July and he wasn’t honest with me when I asked him about the pole several times in the past. He kept telling me it had been ordered.

Note the temporary wooden support pole on the left side in the photo. The photo's from August 24, but the pole has been in place a lot longer than that.

Lately I’ve been asking him about the garage doors (where are they, what happened to the two-week timeframe it was supposed to take to make them). He simply replies with, “We don’t want them here yet. We’re not ready for them.” And then I double-check to make sure they were ordered and he says they were. From my point-of-view the garage doors can go in anytime. The openings are framed and trimmed, the electrical wiring has been put in place, and the plumbing has been put in place. I don’t think you need siding on the garage before the doors are put in.

Here’s yet another good David-the-contractor story. Lazaro and Arturo showed up after not seeing them for over a week. They got started on putting in the windows in the garage bay and found out the windows are too small for the openings they made. David suggested to Brad that it was our fault—that we changed the window size on him. And here’s the thing: David had us change the window size. This is taken from an e-mail dated May 20 (note that he always writes in all caps for some reason):

YOU WILL NEED TO MODIFY YOUR FIRST STORY WINDOW PLACEMENT TO ACCOMMODATE THIS. THE STUDS AND PLATES OF THE FIRST STORY WALLS WILL NEED TO BE 2"X6" AND NOT 2"X4" BECAUSE OF THE SECOND STORY. THE COLUMNS CAN BE BUILT DIRECTLY INTO THE WALLS AND SHOULD BE FOUR 2"X6" STUDS NAILED ONE TO ANOTHER. YOU CAN DESIGN THIS INTO YOUR NORTH FACING FIRST STORY WINDOW WALL

My opinion is that David didn’t convey this to Lazaro and so they used the original window sizes. He also has the order form with all of the window sizes, so he should have given that to Lazaro. I really don’t see how it’s our job to notify Lazaro of the change. What I need to do is make sure David covers the cost of the time it takes Lazaro and Arturo to make the windows fit. I don’t feel we should have to pay for that.

Day 75-80

The plumbing issue ended up being a bigger deal than we had originally thought. To fix the problem we had to replace the sewer line from the garage to the house (probably 60 feet or so of pipe). It’s a really good thing I didn’t work on the garden on that side of the house as I had planned! I am a little concerned about my bamboo, but they tied it back and seemed to be somewhat careful with it. If there’s anything I’ve learned during this remodel project it’s that you might as well say goodbye to all of your plants. I even moved several to get them at least four or five feet away from the site and still the workers lay materials on top of them or walk on them. Apparently they are plant-blind. Enough with the plants. Here are photos of the pipe project (yes, that's water in the first two photos).

In other news, Lazaro and Arturo haven’t worked at our site in over a week. I think our contractor is playing us because on Friday he asked me if the siding had arrived (how would he know since he’s never on site). I told him it hadn’t and he said it was a good thing he didn’t send Lazaro over that day, but that he’d be there to work on the siding on Monday. On Monday (this morning) I called him at 8:30 to tell him the siding arrived. He then called Brad sometime in the afternoon and told him Lazaro wasn’t going to be over today because the siding had just arrived. Interesting. I would rather be told someone’s not going to show up instead of being told a fib. Hopefully we’ll see Lazaro tomorrow.

Now for some bad news. We had our first inspection today and we didn’t pass. It was a site inspection and the only reason we didn’t pass was because the roof of the garage is too close to the property line. David said he’s going to fight the issue since the roof should be grandfathered in. If we lose the fight we have to cut part of the roof off. I don’t fully understand it, but it sounds ridiculous. Hopefully David will make us proud and make it so we don’t have to do such a dumb thing. Considering one inspector already passed the site plans it doesn’t make sense that our plan would fail in person. I predict much inspection drama coming our way…

Day 70-74

The stucco is done! It looks fabulous. The only down side is that we had planned on keeping it in its natural state/color, but Red said it would be better to paint it to add a layer of protection from moisture. He said it would be fine to leave it as-is, but if it was his garage he’d paint it. Coming from the stucco guy we might want to paint it. I guess we could paint it the same color as the stucco (which will lighten as it cures).

Red will be back tomorrow to clean things up. Stuccoing is definitely messy, messy, messy. Once Red’s gone I imagine Lazaro and Arturo will be back to finish the bottom of the garage. I haven’t seen them in several days, but there’s not a whole lot they could do right now anyway.

The electricians and plumbers have both been here this week. The plumbers are great. They’re a father and son team (James Crawford Sr. and Jr.). Today they found out that when the sewer line from the garage to the street was laid it, it was laid level—instead of sloping away from the garage. They said it won’t cause any problems but that by code it has to slope away from the garage. Hopefully that’s one of the last problems that will crop up. It’s probably going to add another day or two to their plumbing schedule. I’m just happy they found it before the City did.

Our contractor still isn’t my favorite person in the world. After I wrote my last entry he told us we needed to pick out our plumbing fixtures ASAP—like that day. This isn’t the first time he’s done that. To make a long story short he gave us the name of the person he gets wholesale fixtures from. When we tried to buy something from her (after going to the showroom) she said we’d have to set up an appointment so she could go through all of the details. We said we knew what we wanted (this faucet in chrome with this valve). She said no, no, we’d have to set up an appointment. I conveyed that to David when he called today and he said he’d take care of it. We’ll see. I’m not entirely positive he remembers everything we discuss.