Laurie's World

Well…it has been 3 months and 1 day…So when you think about it like that…It has not really been that long since this all started. BUT…We have been wthout a kitchen since the third week of May and it is getting a little old…OK…VERY OLD! So I am excited about the progress around here lately. First of all…we are very close to painting the walls…The drywallers are muddin’ and sandin’ fools. This is very defintely the most messiest part so far…Drywall dust is the finest whitest fluffiest stuff that is impossible to sweep and even more difficult to vacumn…so DUST IS US!! Drywall John’s daughter (Ashley) and niece (Madeline) came over to play with my girls today…although Jackie went to Whidbey Island with Vicki B for a couple of days, Rachael and 2 of her friends were here…so they had a blast playing around. I also got a very important call today…my flooring (my beautiful prefinshed Brazilian Cherry lite 3 1/2″ plank–in case you were wondering what kind of floor I ordered) is IN…I am going to pick it up tomorrow so it can start to aclimatize to our house (5-7 days). I would have had it delivered, but that costs an extra $200, so I can certainly drive into Seattle for less than that. I will have to very careful with my precious load as it weigh 2100 lb…Anyway, the timing is perfect as we will start the install next weekend once the walls are sealed, textured, primed and then painted…speaking if which I better pick a wall colour eh??

Mario, the painter, is making some very good progress on the outside of the house. He says he will be done on Sat (except for the 4 columns and the front door–which he will come back to do after the cement is done and the columns are framed and trimmed out)…I love the colour, even though it is lighter than I thought…it is SO HARD to pick colours off a little chip the size of a quarter…but I really do like it…It may and I say MAY…have yellow undertones…which I swore I would never paint my house!! Mario is plasticing the windows and undoing as he goes…which is nice as having the windows sheeted over makes living inside very rough…it gets very hot and humid when the windows are blocked off…so he is trying hard to get the plastic off as soon as he paints the trim.

The concrete looks great…just like I said before…

They were also here today jacking out the “bad” patio in the back…NOW this is the way to remove a patio…It took less than 2 hours to break up this whole patio…and then they used the bucket on the bobcat to load all the chunks (except for what I moved to the back to save for stepping stones) and hauled it all to Cadman to be recycled…2 loads…

Well…Oh happy day! We got some concrete today…Dave got here about 9am and his crew showed up about 10:30 and they worked hard to get everything ready for the 1:30 pour. Well, the biggest boom pump truck in the world showed up at 1:30, but just sat here at $125 per hour until the concrete truck showd up at just before 3pm. YIKES!! So anyway Dave called Cadman and made a stink and apparently, they are going to credit us some money on our next pour…SIGH…

The girls made stepping stones from the oversplatters…which will be a nice souvenir

That boom reached from the road in the front of the house all the way over the top of the tallest part of the house to the back yard…WOW eh? The operator asked me if i was nervous about my house seeing that go over the top like that…and I said “Should I be??” I wasn’t until he said that!

We did a NICE job of completely blocking the street to cars between the pump truck and the concrete truck…Sorry Peter!! I did see you had to park a ways away…

This is how we are dealing with the access to our septic tanks…we made these circle risers out of styrofoam and then the concrete will be poured right up to it and then removed to create a void. Troy is going to make lids (out of something clever and durable) to slip right into the circle holes in the concrete and then it will all be flush with the concrete…

Here is the side of the house where the pool equipment is…we have put in posts for a real cedar fence that we are going to build around this area to obscure the pool equipment and the garbage cans etc…

And this is where the sidewalk will join the driveway in the front.

It was way too dark to take pictures when they finally finished up at close to 9pm tonight…so I will take some in the morning and post so you can see the finished product…It does look great though!

The drywallers were also here again today…now this i am helping them out with quite a bit. Not hanging sheets, but with taping and mudding…it is kinda fun actually and it keeps me out of the bar…which is looking pretty good at this point

I also forgot to take pictures of what that all looks like too, and I am feeling a bit too lazy to get out of bed to go down and take pictures of tonight…but I will do that tomorrow also…

Oh yeah…and Mario the painter is starting tomorrow…so I am excited to get the lights up on the outside of the house and getting gutters etc…

ALSO>>>honourable mention to my pal Vicki…who provded her camera to me today to get these pictures as mine is acting up again…ARGHHH

Well, the drywallers (John and Jose) were here yesterday. It seemed slow, but I think it just took them a while to get in their groove. Also, they started with the skylights…which has got to be the most difficult part of the job. So…I will wait to make a complete assessment but I can tell that Drywalling is not their speciality…that is OK…as long as they do a good job and come in on budget. So today, John has been here all day do far…Jose popped out for a bit to get a pal to help out and Jeff came just before 1pm. So they are into the ceiling on the old part of the house, so it goes much faster (as the framing is more regular) and they can use full sheets…

This is the last we will see of our good friend "BEAM" forever (hopefully!)

Cement Dave was here today…The schedule is set for the "bad pour" concrete in the back patio to be jacked out and removed this Sat, all the aggregate to be done in one pour on Tuesday and the back patio to be repoured on Sat (the 28th). I am nervous about the pour on Tuesday, but Dave says he has 5 guys, so it should be OK. I will let you know…

Mixed reviews for today…

The inspector came and signed us off…we are all good to "enclose our framing". ie: we can drywallThe drywall was delivered too late in the day for them to start today, but none the less it is here for them to get going first thing in the am (8:30am to be precise).

So being on the main floor of the house is like being in a padded bubble now–very weird! All the sound is so muffled–I was not really aware of how echoey it was until now. The vapour was expertly done by MOI…Plastic vapour barriers are not mandatory here to meet code–they seal the drywall instead with a PVA primer (which i am going to do also), but I felt better with the plastic–so i did it myself

Oh Yeah and The siders are finally "done"

So that is the good news…now for the crummy part of my day…

The siders came to collect–as they believe they are done–So now that fight begins…

The HVAC/gas guy also came by with his bill…SIGH! Can you say "almost twice the estimate"? I can, and it makes me very cranky…

That and cement Dave has not come back yet to keep working on the patios etc…so not sure what to think of that. I reserve judgement at this time…

Well, the insualtors are hereThat is good news. I have called in the inspection for tomorrow…although I am hoping they can come this afternoon–probably tomorrow though.

They use stilts to reach the attice—how cool!

The siders are here…they claim that today is the day of completion. They do however need MORE white wood to
finish the trim around the dormer windows. I think I have made no less than 7 runs for materials for them…It has been confirmed however, that they are not going to clean up their own garbage. I came right out and asked Bryan. This disappoints me greatly! BTW the company name is Build Design & Develop. So I guess I will put up a note on Freecycle for anyone who wants wood scraps and/or cedar siding scraps. This may get rid of some of it…SIGH

Neils came by also this morning to finish up the controls for the pool light and cover. We had him move them to be recessed into the siding and wall so that they look better than they did before.

The patio can not be saved…they are going to jack hammer it out and repour

11:30 am

I first heard Dave out there at 7:23am…he may have been here before then, but that is when I heard him…He had a couple other guys with him…his brother, Glen and a guy named Chris…They got everything ready and when the concrete arrived at 10:15, they started to pour…

The pump truck is a line pump this time instead of a boom pump…Apparently the trees made a boom truck a little problematic…

So…all was going swimmingly until they ran out of concrete

So we are waiting for another truck to come with the rest…

12:05 pm

OK…It just came…and guess what no colour!! SIGH! So now we wait for truck number three…

1:24pm

Truck number three has come and gone without leaving us any concrete. Glen sent it away after it sat for an hour spinning while he waited for the pump truck to get the concrete out that was now setting in his pump lines. The pump guy said it was going to take him at least another hour…so apparently if the concrete in the truck gets too hot it sets too fast and the guys won’t be able to lay it right if it sets too fast. What a disaster!

3:28pm

Yup…definitely a disaster…so now we are in "what can be done to salvage this job?" mode. The rest of the patio will have to be poured another day–they say they can blend it in…

Poor Dave…(What am I saying actually??? POOR ME!) But Dave has gone off to try to find a tool to clean up the grooves. Glen and Chris are here trying to clean up the finish…Glen thinks we should let the grooves go and just clean up the finish , then once it is dry, cut the grooves with a saw. Sounds Great to me…not sure why they did not do this in the first place…

Note Rachael’s supervisory stance!! No matter where she is standing…That is a "Russill" thing–for my Mum…

OK…had to change up the theme for Vicki…she was freaked out by the last one

Phase one of the insulation took place today…So much more to the Air Infiltration package than I knew…So hopefully we are on the schedule for the batts on Monday…still waiting to hear back about that.

Cement Dave is here working hard to be ready for our 10am pour tomorrow…I will let you know how that goes…

Siders are here again…maybe today is the day for completion…and then we start the fight over the bill

L

Thanks for asking though!!

And, oh yeah, Cement Dave had a small heart attack–remember when I said we would be lucky if he lived through this job…SIGH! Maybe working in 102 F degree heat is not a good idea…The thing that makes this difficult is we are not suppsed to know–so now I have to watch him like a hawk without him getting suspicious. He still plans on getting our first pour (the back patio) on Saturday

The good news is the insulators are coming tomorrow (Washington Insulation), so we can get our inspection on Monday and the drywallers can start on Tuesday–WHAT?? you say?? Wasn’t that supposed to happen last Monday? Good to see y’all are paying attention

The NICE guys (John and his brother–did not catch his name) that I hired to do this went out to get the materials for the job and were nice enough to call us from the store and let us know that the materials alone would be more than the materials and labour quote we had from Washington Insulation. A (wise) little bird (Drew) told us that no one could beat the prices of going straight to a company that insulates and does nothing but insulation…as they are the only ones who get an inside track on pricing on insulation—everyone else pays retail!! So happily enough these guys (since we were on a time and materials bid) told us we should really go with this other bid–It was only by chance that they even knew about the bid because as they were heading out the door they told me they were going to Washington Insulation to get the materials and I said "Haha…I got a bid from them and it was just over $1000…so don’t spend more than that!" It has not been my practice to compare bids openly with the subs…but in this case it is good it "slipped" out…saved us about $950. Had to wait until Friday the 13th to get the job done though…OOOOOH!! I am sure it will be fine thoughI am not the superstitious type. We are still getting these guys (Precision Restoration) to do the drywall though…They will start on Tuesday as we do not know what time the inspector will meander by on Monday.

Yeah…I gotta get some steam out and I know of no better place to do it than this. Maybe somehow somewhere when someone googles Bryan or Dick or Aaron or BetterBuildDesign or whatever the heck the name of these guy’s company is, this blog will come up and I can get the word out there. I am gonna get the name of the company off their trucks tomorrow…all three of them have it on there, I just have not paid that much attention…I hope they are proud of the fact that they have been parking outside of my house (for sometimes up to 6 whole hours a day GASP!) for four weeks now and everyone can see that they STILL have not finished siding my house.

So I have told everyone who will listen and I will tell more…DO NOT hire these guys to side your house, or do anything for you as it will take four times as long as they say and cost you over 100% more than they say it will.

We have not really been chatty with these guys for a while now…ever since Bryan told me that the chimney that was supposed to take 10 hours to build actually took him 29–yes 29! I thought it was 21, but I was wrong. Bryan was feeling generous when he knocked the rate on the newbie’s hours down to $35 instead of his highly skilled rate of $50 per hour. But of course he had spent 2 hours and Dick spent 1, so that brought my grand total up to $1060.

So I have been holding my tongue thinking OK….they said they would be done by Wed of this week…Not sure how they are gonna get that done…but maybe they will pull a couple of really long days and get it done. Well…that was shot out the window when Bryan left at 8:45 this morning and we were down to 2 guys (really like less than 2 actual workers, but 2 bodies lets say). SO when this afternoon I saw Aaron making a big pile of garbage on the side of the house in the only patch of grass I have left and then dumping gargabe cans of loose nails, screws and metal bits on the top…I SNAPPED! Not sure what he was thinking–EVER heard of a garbage bag?? Apparently not–as he indicated when I asked him!

So we will see what comes of this…

Thanks for listening…