Yesterday's Big Waste of Time

Our french doors were supposed to be in yesterday so we took the trailer to the warehouse hoping that they could unload the doors directly onto the trailer. The truck was supposed to be there somewhere between 10 and 12. 12:30 and the window supplier had no idea what had happened to the truck and couldn't contact the driver. At 1:30, I gave up and went home. The guy working at the warehouse left at 3, and David left at 3:20. At 3:30, I got a call that the doors won't be ready to ship until next week. Sounds like a real organized business, not even realizing that they were trying to find out what happened to a non-existent shipment.

Change of Plans?

This is the color scheme that we wanted, but when we got back from Texas, the stucco was pink. The stucco guy said that the pink would go away as the stucco dried, but it hasn't.
This is what the light green would look like with the "pink". Yuck!
Red would look good, but red is one of the worst exterior colors so would probably cost a lot more up front and would need to be painted more often.
This dark green looks ok, if we are stuck with the pink stucco.

Merry Christmas!

Windows are in, tar paper is on, and the house leaks like a sieve! But hey, it's progress. Rudy (sub of a sub of a sub) did a great job on the roof framing but David had to hound him to get everything done right. And at the end of the job, Rudy tried to get us to pay more - like there's one price to do the job, another to do it right.





Here's a picture of the back windows being lifted for installation.


And the Coast Guard finally made it to our bayou to clean it up. They are taking out all of the dead trees along the banks and any debris left in the water (like the 2 boats and a refrigerator in the canal). They didn't get too far before they were done for the day, so they will have to come back up after Christmas.

It looks like a house!

Progress & The Coast's Most Wanted Criminals

A sub of the sub of our contractor built the cinderblock walls for the front and back porches. We were impressed when the crew leader came out and made them tear down a wall and rebuild it. We didn't even know what the problem was, but were thrilled to have something substandard get fixed without us having to point it out. Then the next day, the crew left just before lunch with the job finished - if you didn't mind that the wall wasn't straight or level. It was another 4 or 5 days before the crew leader came back out, agreed that the wall was garbage, and had the top two rows of blocks fixed. You can see the repaired wall in the picture. Two steps forward, one step back. Then there was a rush to get the dirt inside the walls and compacted so that the other crew could pour concrete. Which never happened (it did rain a little the day they were supposed to pour). So now the lack of poured porches is starting to delay the deck and stair construction. Maybe tomorrow...Eduardo and crew started framing last week. Because they couldn't work on the decks, David had to scramble to finalize details and materials for the interior walls. The crew worked on Thanksgiving, which worked out ok since Thanksgiving at Diane's wasn't until late afternoon.
Lastly, Michael Patrick Serge (the old contractor) is one of the Gulf Coast's 12 most wanted criminals!

Update

It took a while to get the new contractor going - we didn't have a firm price from Baylee, and meanwhile other crews were stopping by giving us prices. We finally decided to stick with Dwain from Baylee (who did the last concrete pour) and things moved quickly. Too quickly. The last 10 days have been extremely hectic.

Eduardo and crew came out on Thursday to set the flooring. David stayed with them until the first sheet was glued and screwed, then went back to work. When he checked on the crew a couple of hours later, all the sheets were in, with the first sheet "Norboard" side up, and the remaining 64 sheets with "this side down" on top. (It was also in spanish, but to be fair, it was really difficult to read.)

The concrete pour was set for Tuesday, but luckily no concrete was available until Thursday (they would never have made it for Tuesday). The crew built bucks for the windows and doors on Friday and Saturday. (The bucks are the wood frames around the windows and doors that are attached to the foam ICF blocks.) The ICF walls were set Saturday and Sunday, and the rebar stirrups and brackets were set Monday and Wednesday. Or was it Tuesday and Thursday? Anyways, Thursday was rainy, so the pour ended up being rescheduled for Saturday.

And while the blocks were being set, another crew was setting the forms for the columns. You can see the rebar for the columns in the picture above. There were lots of problems with the columns - one of the workers hurt his arm, and they didn't always show up when they were supposed to. So it was a rush to get the columns set correctly, plumb, and level for the concrete pour. Not sure that they were ever completely fixed, but they are what they are.


Dwain would often show up on the job with a badge from the Lutheran charities Katrina volunteer organizations. Sometimes he would bring the permanent volunteers with him to show them an ICF house. We teased him about when the volunteers would be showing up to work - next thing we knew, there were 15 kids mostly from Illinois, with some from Minnesota, the Bronx, and Texas, at our house ready to work. Apparently they had run out of work at the other jobs, so they stayed busy cleaning up around the new house (including busting up some concrete slop from previous pours) and working on the jungle gym for the girls. They were a great bunch of kids.
There won't be any more work done on the house for a couple of weeks, so I won't be posting for a while, unless I just decide to bore you with SBA versus Bank loan problems, or dealing with the geniuses at the code office to get them to write a letter to say that we can't repair the old (now non-existent) house. Without the letter, we can't get our $30K from flood insurance to build higher. Nothing is easy!

Not much progress

The trusses are up, and thanks to David's supervision, are mostly level. Other than that, no progress. Hopefully things will start moving this week.

We've given up on Juan's crew setting the forms for the pilings, so David is making the forms himself. The $350 of trusses that we were scrapping because of rot/termites work perfect as one side of the square forms, so that saved him a little work.