Pat skipped town

That's what the note on the yellow paper said. Pat left a lot of houses incomplete, and a lot of outstanding bills. I'm guessing 14 houses with an average of $40K owed - that adds up to a lot of money. The business card is the lawyer that is handling his bankruptcy, but rumor has it that Pat can't file bankruptcy because not enough time has passed since the last time he filed.

Concrete pour went well

Or at least as well as can be expected. There were problems at the corners - the walls started bulging. Most were corrected before they became a problem, but the one in the picture had a blow-out (the foam broke and concrete poured out). In the picture, Joe is cutting loose the broken foam so that the rest of the adjacent blocks can be patched smooth.

We owe Joe a lot - he is the one who made the last contractor pay him back for using our blocks.

The new contractor worked out well - we are meeting with him on Friday to work out details for going forward.

Concrete Pour Tomorrow!

The concrete pour was supposed to be last Tuesday, then Thursday, then next Wednesday. Poor Juan is swamped with working 4 jobs and is trying as hard as he can to get to our project, yada, yada, yada. In reality, Juan has the people to work our job, he is refusing to until he gets paid the $15K that Central owes him. When Pat (Central's owner) told me that he would have his own crew out to set the pilings if Juan couldn't get out here by Monday, I realized that Juan is not going to get paid anytime soon.

We have paid Pat for this concrete pour, but with three delays already, lots of lies, and a hurricane heading into the Gulf, I decided that it was time to move on. So we have a new contractor to pour the concrete Saturday morning. Having them come out on short notice, on a job that they've never worked, means that we are paying a premium ($1K). That plus the $800 pump truck means that we're paying close to $2K for work that Pat owes us. But at least we will be moving forward again. If we decide to stick with this new contractor, it will be a cost + 15% contract and I am hoping that the rest of the work will cost less than what we would have owed Pat to finish.

I tried calling Pat yesterday, but nobody answered the phone, as usual. So I sent him a nice e-mail telling him that we were canceling the contract. I'm not sure if we will hear from him again. He might send us a bill trying to get more money out of us, or he might tell us we can't break the contract, or he might say thanks and good luck with the rest of the project. My guess is that one of his crew will show up early one morning to pick up their ladder and that will be the last we hear from them. Hopefully they'll pay some of their bills - I have two subs to check still, but I do know that Pat owes $6.5K of concrete and $1.5K of pump trucks on our project alone. My guess is that he will be filing for bankruptcy sometime in the next couple of months. I just hope that his bond covers our accounts.

Of contractors and openings

David's put a new opening into one of the back walls - just in case anyone else questions our "enclosure".

We are still having contractor problems. Central has been storing our ICF blocks - we checked last week to make sure that they still had them. Turns out that they used our blocks on another project, but Joe, the ICF supplier, realized this and so made Central pay him for our blocks before he would sell them any more blocks. So now Joe has our blocks. Thank goodness that Joe was looking out for us or we would have been in a world of hurt.

Central still owes us a concrete pour (not to mention that they still need to pay $8.5K worth of bills on our job). One of Central's subs, Juan, was supposed to set the forms for our pilings this weekend but never showed. David had Juan's number so gave him a call - surprise, surprise - Central owes Juan money so Juan isn't doing any work for them until he gets paid.

We are going to let Central pour the walls, hopefully sometime this week, and then we will break the contract. We will probably use Juan to finish the job, although Juan doesn't want to take the job until Central pays him - he's worried that he won't get paid if Central finds out that he's taking over. Hopefully he'll get paid this week.

Using Juan will bring its own set of problems - Juan has 200 people working for him, and they've always done great work on our project. But there aren't a lot of english speaking workers in his crews.

Twilight Zone

Our lawyer presented our case, then it was the brick wall Code Enforcer's turn... "I recommend that the Board allow the Carter's to continue..." And then I woke up. No, seriously, that's sorta how it played out. 35 minutes of discussions, but bottom line is that we can go on. I guess that when the Board got the petition from the lawyer, they did some investigating and realized that their code was written wrong. So they are going to fix it - but instead of fixing it to the way FEMA intended, they are taking out the term "fully enclosed" and are just leaving the word "enclosed". They will leave the limit under the either/or clause, so I guess they'll fix that the next time someone threatens to sue.

Bottom line, the brick wall came across as reasonable and knowledgeable and kept his prestige, and we get to move forward. And the lawyer was extremely generous in his fees, so we got off lightly there.

For now, we'll keep with Central Development - but won't be paying them a dime until the financial aspects of our project are taken care of.

What a difference a day makes. Maybe I'll actually sleep tonight!

Good thing we have a lawyer

I didn't get yesterday's mail until this afternoon. I was surprised to find a certified letter from a lawyer (not mine) in the box. Of the three concrete pours, we paid Central for the concrete for two and paid the concrete yard directly for the third. Turns out that Central never remitted for the two pours - they owe $6,452. The concrete yard's lawyer has instructed us to make no further payments to Central until they have paid their bill in full, or we may be liable for the entire amount due.

Good news is that they are not asking us for the money. Bad news is that they are not asking us for the money "yet".

So now we have the added complications of having a contractor who has not paid his subs in full, and we have to find a new contractor.

At this point, I am hoping that we lose in front of the Board tomorrow - if we go to court, we can sue for damages. Otherwise, I have a feeling that the money situation is not going to be good.

On a sad note, we said goodbye to our sweet Tigger on Monday. At 15, she had lost all hearing, most of her sight, and over the previous week had lost so much strength that she couldn't walk.