Day 129-143

I've run out of steam for this blog. I can't believe the project is so far behind. Initially it was supposed to be done in mid to late September. Then it was supposed to be done at the end of October. Today it's November 10 and it's still not done. I laughed at my neighbor when she said "aim for Christmas." I responded that it will definitely be done before Thanksgiving. She looked at me and shrugged, unconvinced. I'm starting to fear she was right!

Here's where we're at today. The electrical is done (although not without a lot of mistakes and frustration). The floor guy showed up this morning (he was supposed to be here last Wednesday--and before that the last week in October). The plumbers showed up after lunch, but they're not done. If all goes well things will be wrapped up by Wednesday and we can ask for a final inspection at the end of the week. Having said that I'm sure we'll fail our inspection. I don't know why, but considering the only one we passed on the first try was our insulation inspection, I'm just expecting this thing to drag out another week.

I owe this site a bunch of photos. Most importantly the bathroom. It is the only room that's finished (except that the water's shut off and I haven't painted the woodwork). It has tile, painted walls, lights, a toilet, sink, and tub/shower. It looks great! The tile guy did a great job on the tub/shower and Brad did an amazing job on the floor. I got my penny tile after all. Now if I could just prevent the workers from ruining everything (they already dropped spackle on the grout and rubbed it in).



Here's a photos of the lighting in the kitchen/dining area:



And here are a couple photos of the exterior:





I decided this simply wouldn't be a typical post if I didn't share at least one strange story about the project. The lastest snag is with the garage door openers. They still haven't been installed. The installers came several times to install them and each time left without installing anything. Apparently the support beam on the ceiling is in the way. They decided to lower the track, but since it still wasn't low enough for the chains to clear the beam they wanted to lower it even more. We didn't want this because it would take about two feet off height in the garage away. Their other solution was to cut through the beam and then have someone else come in and reinforce it. No thanks. The garage door people couldn't come up with a solution, so Brad did (typical). The solution was to install side mount openers. Get this: the garage door company doesn't know how to install them (or won't). They're not going to help us. However they sell the openers for 2x what they cost online! And they call themselves the Overhead Door Company?! I think not.

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 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.

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 66-69

Remember how I wrote that the stucco would be finished on Thursday? Well, it’s Thursday. Guess what: the stucco’s not done. The good news is that Red started on the scratch coat today. He has about 1/3 of it done. It looks good so far.

The rewiring of the garage is done for the most part. They just need to put in a new electrical box. I imagine they’re not going to do that until the exterior is done so they can mount the meter properly. But honestly, I can’t figure out the rhyme and reason for the way a lot of things have been done, so I’m probably wrong.

The plumbers ran into a snag today. The plumbing vent no longer follows code. Since it’s grandfathered in that’s not a problem unless you have to replace a part of the vent. I think you know where I’m going with this. We have to replace the vent from the roof all the way down. It’s corroded through in several places. The plumber was surprised we didn’t have water damage. Considering how often we use the plumbing I wasn’t too surprised.

Our contractor, David, thinks City inspections will start next week. I won’t hold my breath. He’s not my favorite person in the world right now. Two weeks ago I was saying I’d definitely use him as our contractor when we turn the attic into a master bedroom, but the last few days has me thinking about telling him I’m not paying him for this week’s work. In my opinion he’s not doing his job. The electricians were knocking on our back door with question after question all week. Yes, I work at home, but how on earth do I know at what height I want an outlet. For one, the information should be on the electrical plans. And for another, it’s my contractor’s job to deal with those questions. I have a full-time job. I don’t need another one. Today is the first day that I’m aware of that David’s been here all week. Can you tell I’m a little irritated by him?