Day 122-128

Note that this is from the week of October 20. Since I’m ready for this project to be over I’m not doing my best at keeping up with the blog. My writing seems to be a perfect reflection of the slowness of the project.

Here’s a somewhat strange story for the final two or so weeks of this project. Our contractor will be gone! He left for vacation Tuesday (day 123) and won’t be back until the 31^st (day 133). Talk about terrible timing. To top it off he didn’t tell us until late Monday morning. He said everything would be fine and we could call him at any time. It didn’t exactly make me feel great about things. He gave us a list of all the things that were supposed to get done this week:

Monday: Prime drywall

Tuesday: Texture drywall

Wednesday: Tile guy, floor guy, and Lazaro (work on trim)

Friday: Electricians and garage door openers installed

Misc: Painting all week, plumbers after tile is done, floor guy back after plumbers are done

David also said Manor and his crew are supposed to come back Tuesday to fix the drainage problem that was created when they put in the retaining wall. That was supposed to be fixed months ago. The ductless HVAC can’t be installed until it’s fixed because the outside part of the HVAC is supposed to rest on the ground they need to fix. And if you recall they were supposed to dig a trench and install the cable they ruined. That never happened, so I’m already prepared to make some phone calls to David.

Here are the things that actually did get done this week:

The drywall was primed and finished on schedule. Lazaro installed the trim. The exterior paint was finished. After calling Manor each day for three days the drainage issue was fixed. That’s it. No floor guy, tile guy, electricity, or garage door openers. The electricians showed up, but they were slow and had to do a few things twice. I’ll elaborate when I update the blog for this week. I will give you a big hint on how things went by stating they are by far the worst group we’ve worked with throughout this project. Even worse than David!

Throughout the week I worked on painting the ceiling after the workers left for the day. I finished up on Saturday and then primed and caulked the trim on Sunday.

Day 117-121

When the end is near it seems that everything is going in slow motion. As of right now neither the drywall or exterior paint is done. The drywall gets its primer coat Monday (day 122) and texture coat Tuesday, and then it will be done. The exterior paint probably won’t be finished until the end of the week. The good news on the paint is that the painters have been thoroughly preparing the exterior, so the end result should be impressive. They even worked on Saturday.

Friday (day 119) the garage doors were installed. We can’t believe they’re finally here. Of course, like everything else, they’re not done. Since we don’t have electricity yet they didn’t install the garage door opener. I need to make sure David remembers to call them back to take care of that. Once everyone leaves then we’ll also stain the doors.

On the drywall front: three odd things. 1) There’s an area that hasn’t been taped floated. It’s about three feet long and we cannot for the life of us figure out why it wasn’t taped/floated and why it wasn’t completely obvious to the drywaller. David marked areas that needed work, so hopefully this will be taken care of. 2) They drywalled over some wiring in the ceiling. This is odd all the way around because we have no idea what the wiring was for (maybe a smoke alarm?) and why they would drywall over it. We have to make sure that we don’t have live wires loose in the attic. 3) Lazaro left some of the baseboard trim on before drywalling started. Now they’re going to have to spend time making sure they do the trim right instead of just tacking it up over the drywall.

Sunday (day 121) Brad and I primed the garage bay walls. We had asked David if this was OK and he said to go ahead with it. At least that’s one thing out of the way. We can’t decide if we’re going to take the time to paint it or not. Right now we’re leaning towards not painting it. It should probably be done, but we have a lot of painting in our future and the garage bay walls are not high on our list of things to paint.

Day 111-116

On day 111 the drywallers finished tacking the drywall up. David called for a drywall inspection before taping and floating began (the city has to make sure enough screws are used—aka making more money). We failed. We failed miserably because David doesn’t know the new city construction codes. He had told us we didn’t need to drywall the walls of the garage bays. We thought this would be a good way to save $1000 right now and that eventually we’d put the drywall up ourselves (if we decided we needed it). We also failed because the wrong material was used at the tub surround—and the cabinet next to the tub wall wasn’t covered with anything (dummies). Apparently greenboard isn’t supposed to be used under tile anymore. After researching it online I can't believe a drywall company would actually install it in a tub/shower.

David seemed really angry about the failed inspection. If I’ve learned anything from working with him, his anger is usually a sign that he knows he messed up. This lack of knowledge threw us off schedule by a little over three working days. When you’re in the home stretch that feels like weeks! The kicker is that he didn’t even come to the site to see the failed inspection. He called me and asked me what it said. Looking back on it I should have told him to come over and read it for himself. It’s not that I minded telling him what the inspection said, but I did mind that he wasn't coming to the site to inspect the problem.

David said he’d go down to the city offices and fight the failed inspection. He said he just finished a garage before our project and wasn’t required to drywall the bay walls. And then he added that they might have begun the project before the new codes were released, so they might not have pertained to that project. Duh. Since David charges us for time spent waiting around at the city offices we made the decision to just suck it up and pay for the drywall. We also chose to do that simply because we didn’t want to add any more time to the project.

While all of this was going on we also got the exterior paint bid. Ouch. However, we expected a higher than usual bid because our friend who used the same painters told us they’re expensive but worth every penny. A part of me thought about getting another bid and then I thought about time. I just want this thing done, so time is outweighing money right now. The longer I work with David the closer I get to losing it. I’ll pay thousands to get rid of him.

And that brings me to another David story. This one deals with whether or not we should paint the stucco. We originally chose stucco because we love the natural look of it. We had been given the choice to add a tint to it and we chose not to. When the stucco job was done, Red (the stucco guy) told us we should paint the stucco to protect it. This made us sad, but I found paint that seemed to match. We just wouldn’t have that uneven, natural look we were going for. Then David threw us for a loop and said we shouldn’t paint the stucco because of the Tyvek moisture barrier under it. He said if we sealed the exterior with paint the Tyvek wouldn’t breathe properly and moisture could get trapped. He then asked why we didn’t pick one of the tints Red offered if we were going to paint the stucco. I said because no one told us a tint would offer any protection. Then he said he told us as much and I firmly told him he did not, and why would we choose to paint when a tint would have been cheaper? He then said we shouldn’t paint the stucco because the Tyvek representative advised against it.

Thanks to David, Brad spent part of his morning calling paint suppliers and the Tyvek people to try to figure out what we should do. About half said to paint the stucco and the other half said we shouldn’t. Our decision? We’re not going to paint right now, and if in a few years we see any deterioration in the stucco we’re going to paint then. On another note, we don’t even know if the tint for the stucco would have offered any protection. We definitely don’t think David knows.

On a positive note we have all of the paint picked out (for the non-stucco areas) and the painters started prepping. We’re supposed to get rain this week, so my guess is the exterior won’t be finished before the weekend.

Day 108-110

Over the weekend Brad and I worked on the garage. I was filling in the trench that was created due to our plumbing/sewer problem and Brad was doing some Cat 5/cable wiring. Both projects weren’t very fun, but I wanted to save my bamboo and Brad needed to get the wiring done right. Originally, if you recall, the foundation guys were supposed to doing wiring because they cut the original line. When we figured out we’d never see them again (we at least were reimbursed for the cable) David said Lazaro would take care of it. Bless Lazaro’s heart, but I don’t think he does dirty jobs that involve digging in the dirt. Maybe once a week David would tell Brad to get together with Lazaro to take care of the cable, and each time Brad reminded David he already did. Fortunately since we already had the plumbing trench Brad didn’t have to do much digging (except to get the cable under the house).

Let’s just say I didn’t completely fill the trench in. I just filled in around the bamboo so I could water it decently. Since I really liked the plumbing guys I don’t mind doing a little of their work. Brad did complete his project, so now my office is ready for my computer. Too bad the rest of the office isn’t ready for my computer. I’m ready to get back out there!

Drywall started on Wednesday (day 110). Originally David said it would start Monday, then he said Tuesday, and finally he said Tuesday or Wednesday. He also said it would only take them one day to put it up (not tape/float), but it took them two.

Day 99-107

In the previous post I mentioned the city inspector dropping by. My hope was he was going to pass our framing inspection and we could move on to drywall. Well, it was the plumber inspector—not the framing inspector. And once again we didn’t pass. Apparently there was low gas pressure. The culprit was a nail in the line. That’s since been taken care of and we passed both the plumbing and electrical rough-in inspections. Because we passed both inspections we were able to start insulating.

Now for the framing inspection. I ran into the inspector the day he came to check up on the situation. This was the jerk inspector who wanted to test our smoke alarms in the house (I don’t know if I wrote about that guy, but I know some of you know who I’m talking about). I was a little worried since it was him, but I was friendly and so was he. He asked if I knew where the survey was (which was supposed to be with all of the other paperwork we have to keep posted on site). Our contractor said he had put it with the paperwork, but I couldn’t find it. Fortunately the survey company sent us copies, so I ran into the house to get the survey. When the inspector looked at it he said, “This is the wrong survey. I need a tent survey.” I told him what I gave him was the survey my contractor ordered and asked him what a tent survey was. Apparently it was to resolve the whole issue about the roof being too close to the property line (or too high—I’m not sure which). The inspector obviously felt sorry for me and started asking the questions that should have been asked a month ago (by my contractor). He asked if the second story had been moved. I said we lifted it up and put it back down in its original place. He said that meant it was grandfathered in—if I could prove it. I took him to the stairs that have always remained attached and cemented in the ground. He said that was proof enough and that he’d waive the tent survey. This was great news (even if we did fork over $250 for the wrong survey and had the project put on hold for three weeks). We don’t have to do any alterations to the roofline.

I called David to let him know what happened. He got a little worked up on the phone and said, “I told them to do a tent survey! And why didn’t that inspector grandfather the second story when I asked him to?!” His reaction irritated me quite a bit. For one, he saw the survey as soon as it was done. If he had ordered a tent survey I would think he would have caught that the survey he received wasn’t a tent survey. Either he didn’t order a tent survey or he didn’t look at the survey when it was done. Take your pick. I went with that he didn’t order a tent survey—my second point. I never once heard David call it a tent survey. And as you can see in my previous entries I never called it a tent survey either—which to me means he never called it one. I got out the paperwork in the garage and the inspector definitely wrote “tent survey” on the failed inspection. At first I kicked myself for not noticing that, but then again, am I the contractor? No!

I think I need to lighten things up a bit. I ordered penny tile online for the bathroom floor and it’s already here. It was about 40% less than the quote we got from the tile guy. Granted it’s not the same tile, but it’s as high of quality as what I had picked out. It was my second choice at the tile store and I think it was only $1 a square foot cheaper than the original tile I picked out. For only 33 square feet that would have only saved me $33. Instead I saved $300! Yes, I love a bargain! Considering I can’t get any discounts on the work my contractor has done I figure I should make myself happy by finding high quality finishing pieces at low prices. Too bad those things are only priced in the hundreds instead of the thousands. I'd rather save on the thousands.

Drywall is supposed to start soon. The dates have already been slipping, so who knows if it will be done in the next week.