Monday, October 12, 2009 - Why do Construction Workers Honor Federal Holidays? Do They Think They Are Bankers?

Monday, October 12, 2009 Columbus Day and despite the fact that construction workers don’t take off for federal holidays, we have no workers on site today. No work will proceed until we have new plans that take into account the foundation issue. The area in question is where the steps will lead to the new downstairs area. Since they can dig no closer to the house, the staircase will have to be reconfigured and may not be as sleek and simple as we had wanted. It also affects window placement and who knows what else at this point. All we can do now is wait for the architect to re-work the plans and get them to us to approve. Since it only took us about three months to get the plans just right to begin with, I fear we will lose several days of valuable work time going back-and-forth with the architect. We are now four days behind schedule and work has barely begun. Oh, and guess what? A wet-weather front is moving into the area and could stay with us the rest of the week. Cara reminded me often over the weekend that she would have been just as happy with a pool. Would have been cheaper, too…

Friday, October 9, 2009 - Open Your Wallet

Time for our first additional cost overrun on the project. Sigh. Cara stopped by the house around lunchtime and called me saying all of the equipment was gone, which was odd because they certainly were not done excavating yet. It didn’t seem like a real good sign to me. Shortly thereafter I heard back from our contractor who told me no work was being done today since the engineer said a little extra work needs to be done to secure the foundation and the architect was having to adjust the plans. Cha-ching. Apparently the foundation of our existing house is not as deep as the architect thought, so when the contractor started digging, he was smart enough to check once he was within five feet of the house. He brought the project to a grinding halt in order to keep our house from falling into the eight-foot crater we used to call our backyard. One week into the project and already we are three days behind schedule and a yet-to-be-determined amount over-budget. Not a good start.…And it rained.

Thursday, October 8, 2009 - Play Ball!

Maybe a little dirt was moved around, but the workers apparently knocked off early. There is some sort of concern that if they dig within five feet of the house that it could partially collapse into the hole that has been dug. I believe I asked our contractor about this right before we started and he looked at me as if I were smoking crack. So, our architect along with an engineer are planning to visit Friday to determine if it is safe to continue digging, or if an alternative plan needs to be developed. This particular area is where the staircase leading downstairs will go, so the alternative plan, I think, would be pouring a concrete pad, extending the house out about five feet, and beginning the staircase at the point where the excavation began. Can’t wait to get home Friday and see what the decision is, because I hear architects and engineers are more than happy to donate their time to a good cause, and I also heard they are just giving away concrete for free these days. On a lighter note, I think the hired help that showed up to work on Thursday had a pretty good time. The baseball bat and all of the tennis balls we hit to Minnie were scattered all over the yard. And looking at the indentations of the walls of the excavated area, it looks like they used it as a batting cage to hit tennis balls and walnuts. Maybe they played King of the Mountain, too.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - Minnie Becomes Queen of the Hill

What I will now call Day 1 of construction begins with the excavation of quite a bit of dirt from what will be the basement area, which is now piled high in the back yard. Ah, the smell of progress. The dirt will be used as backfill once the foundation is complete, and then anything left over will be used to re-grade the front and back yards. Until then, Minnie (our Rottweiler) enjoys digging in the dirt pile and playing King, er, Queen of the Mountain. Unfortunately, we also came home to a hole in the side of the house about the size of a beachball on the outside and about the size of a grapefruit on the inside. Nothing quite like seeing daylight through a hole in the wall. Apparently the contractor needed to find out where the flooring of the existing structure was to determine how deep to dig. Instead of listening to one of his workers who told him it was at the point where the bricks meet the blocks, or instead of waiting for us to get home so he could go inside and make the determination, or instead of walking six feet to his left and peering through the sliding glass door to see where the floor was, he decided to take a sledgehammer to the house. Doesn't he remember sledgehammers are only to be used to down small trees? He punched through brick, wood, and drywall to find the floor, which was, ironically, right where the bricks meet the blocks. Luckily that wall has to come down anyway, albeit not for another month. So, the hole is patched on both sides in hopes that Friday’s predicted strong storms don’t penetrate the plastic sheeting duct-taped to the side of the house. Other than that, our biggest challenge is to keep Otis, our 15-year-old blind and deaf beagle, away from the giant eight-foot hole right smack dab in the middle of his stomping grounds.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - Prep Day

What should now be Day 1 of construction ends up being a day of prep work for the contractor. He marked off the area to be excavated with string and spraypaint and removed a small tree that is in the way with a sledgehammer. With what I am paying him, he could have afforded to run down the street to The Home Depot and buy a saw.

Monday, October 5, 2009 - And the Rain Came Down

Day 1 of construction is postponed due to rain…even though it didn’t start raining until after noon. So much for me wishing for a dry start to the project.

Friday, October 2, 2009 - Timberrrrrrr

Before construction could start, we unfortunately had to take down a 40-foot tall maple tree that had provided great shade for the back two bedrooms. I would often times cringe (or maybe smirk) when I would hear other people talk about their power bills, because ours were low, much lower comparatively, to others. I give all the credit to the trees shading our house. So, now that all of the shade trees are gone and we are nearly doubling our space, I’m sure we are in for a rude awakening. We will have a new HVAC unit, so hopefully it will operate more efficiently than the 16-year-old unit we have chugging away currently. Something else interesting that we discovered through our renovations over the years is that there has been no insulation in the walls. None. Found a newspaper from the 1960s inside one of the kitchen walls when we removed the oh-so-practical knotty pine paneling, but no insulation. So we have added it as we have gone along, and when 20 feet of uninsulated wall comes tumbling down next month when we connect the new structure to the old, hopefully things will be as tight as a drum and insulated correctly. Oh, yeah, what about the tree? It was standing when I left for work and gone when I came home. Except for the chipped remnants remaining from where they ground the stump, you would have never known the workers had ever been there. They left no evidence behind; no limbs, no leaves, no tire tracks. And, as I discovered two days later, they went ahead on their own initiative and ground a big stump in the front yard, leftover from a storm-damaged tree I struggled mightily to cut down earlier in the year. I'm sorry the tree is gone. It really was beautiful this time of year, but I have cut down the amount of leaves I will have to rake this year by about 40 bags.