Haven’t posted in awhile. I’ve had a few blog posts milling around in the ol’ noggin, but just haven’t gotten around to posting. I’ve been really busy over at the new house. I haven’t quite reached my breaking point, but I have been quite busy and worn out.
In addition to the various physical labors that I’ve been doing (mostly painting and tiling in the bathroom floors), it’s my responsibility to coordinate with the various contractors. My general contractor (Ron) has actually been very good, though there are times like when he shows up an hour or 2 later than when I was expecting him when I have to remind myself “he is still a contractor”. This is the guy that I have used to fix up my other houses and I’ve been happy with his work and his overall communicativeness and just everything really. I really feel like we’ve been blessed in my starting this rehabbing business a few years ago mostly because of the connection we made with Ron; I think that we would not have come close to being able to afford this new house if we had had to go with a construction firm – most of them were bidding $30-40 thousand more than I think we’re going to end up spending on this project.
We’ve had fairly good luck even with most of our subs. But let me share one story about the electrician. Him and his crew had gotten all the electrical work roughed in a month or two ago and then I hadn’t heard from him in awhile. This in and of itself was not a problem, because there wasn’t anything for them to do until we got things all drywalled and painted and such. But after a few weeks, we were getting close to ready for him and so I called him up to see what his schedule was like. And called him. And called. I left many messages but never got a call back. One time I did get a hold of him and he said “Can I call you right back?” I said sure, but he never called.
Finally, (after maybe 2 weeks of messages) I get an email from him saying “I’m back from Iowa – I’ll be over tomorrow”. When he said that, it did sound vaguely familiar that he was going to be out of town. After talking to him, it turns out he was involved in some sort of custody soap opera, the details of which I will not go in to here, but the good news is that he’s back in town and back on the case. Switches and light fixtures have started to go up.
Oh, and my other job is making sure we have enough money to finish this dang house! We currently are in the positive (And that’s a good thing! â„¢) But there’s always things like “Oh we’re going to need another $100 to pay Ray to finish mudding out the drywall” or “well since we took out the chimney, we need to either move the gas water heater so we can vent it out the side of the house or buy a new electric water heater”).
One of our friends is coming to watch the kids today, so we’re planning on going over there this morning I think – I’ll take the camera and try to post some pics later.