Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Grumbling

This post is just a bunch of complaining, so feel free to skip if that's not your thing!

Still no communication from our builder. Zip. Nada. DH is fit to be tied. He got himself so worked up about it last night. Like he says: WE are the one's paying him. Don't think it's too much to ask to expect a 10 second text that says "Change of plans. I'll be out there to set footings on such and such day". At this point, since we already signed a contract with him, we are going to suffer through this shop build, but I have a feeling we're going to find a new builder to build the house. The shop is four walls, a conrete floor, and a roof with a one room bathroom inside. How hard should this be? DH says he doesn't want to spend all his time constantly having to be on someone and having to get mad in order to get him to make our job a priority. I said, well you are already mad and yelling about it, so might as well direct it at the builder! He told us 60 days to build the shop. Well, we are now on day 22 and the only thing accomplished is one day of site work.

Meanwhile, the folks down on lot 7, who started their excavating like 2-3 days before us, are way ahead, in just a little over a weeks time. The excavating guy took 2 days, the next day the builder showed up and set forms. That afternoon the concrete showed up. Day after forms removed and then excavating guy back filled. Builder was back next day, as well as a sub to start some plumbing/water line stuff. We're still sitting here with an open site. Plus, our builder told DH last week he'd be here Mon or Tues and they would need a sanican on site, so DH had it delivered. So now we've paid a week rental ($25/wk) that we could have waited to have delivered, since he's not out here yet. Our friend (who used same builder 3-4 years ago now) says he also just heard he picked up another job building some duplexes near where friend lives. I have a feeling we are just being put on the back burner.

I got a few comments/suggestions on what my face breakout could be. I'm leaning towards the rosacea idea. Sure seems to fit. Plus, sometimes the bumps do feel warm, like my face is hot. Not sure what is suddenly causing it. I did recently start eating a bunch of sunflower seeds as a snack the past few weeks. That's about the only thing different, from what I usually eat regularly. Maybe an allergy? It seemed to start when I made a batch of brownies a few weeks ago. Then it kinda cleared up and over the weekend I made chocolate cake (I've been craving chocolate lately!) and it's back. I'll cut out chocolate now and see if it clears up. Google also says it could be hormonal - maybe due to peri-menopause? I'm sure my hormones must be changing.

Finally, at about 11am this morning DH sent the builder a text that just said "we need some communication as to what's going on". He then texted back he should be out there Friday to start setting forms. Should?! Well, that's a definite answer. I get that subs are hard to deal with and schedule, but he's our main contractor and he's also known for almost a year now when we wanted to get started on this. We would have waited to schedule the excavator this week, rather than last week, while now the site sits there all opened up getting more muddy each time it rains. We'd have waited until tomorrow to have the sanican delivered. He's not paying the rental on it.

Edit: oh ya, and I forgot to mention DH's buddy. So, we have this little dump trailer you can pull behind a pickup. It's been pretty handy. We do have room to store it here at this house, if we had to, but DH also knew his buddy could use it off and on last summer for his various landscaping projects and since he has 14 acres, we decided to store it at his house all this time. We don't have to have it crammed in our little back yard area, and friend got to use the trailer whenever he needs it. Win for both us of us. It needed a chain welded on the hitch (or something like that). DH was going to take it somewhere last year to get that done, but friend said he would do it.  Still waiting for that to happen! When DH went to pick up the trailer weekend before last no chain and locked somewhere in friends shop (friend was out of town). It's illegal to haul without the chain, but we did it anyway. So, we get all that rock, stones and timbers from that other guy and leave the loaded trailer at our property. We take what we want, gave some landscape timbers to next door neighbor. Friend said he wanted quite a bit of the rest of the stones left. (sure, like you wanted the cut down trees for firewood?!). DH knew if he just lets him come whenever, it will never get done. So, last Sunday he asked him if he could come out Monday after work to get what he wanted loaded in his pick up bed. That was the probably the only way to make sure it gets done! So, he came out, DH helped him load what he wanted (a good half of what was left - of course his big strong son wouldn't come help). Then DH did the lift on the dump trailer and dumped the rest in a small pile on our property and hooked our pick up to the trailer. Friend says "oh, I thought I was taking the trailer back to my house?" DH says no, I'll be needing it now that we are starting our house build. Friend says "oh, I was going to use it this summer". Well, sorry! geez. He knows the reason we got the trailer was for our build and landscaping. If it's not being used, you are welcome to come out and get it and bring it back when you are done.  Are we just stupid and missing something here?

9 comments:

  1. Text the builder that you rented sanicam on whatever date and that will have it picked up if he is not going to come.

    A friend offered to fix power plug on my computer in Dec 16. I cannot get him to bring it back to me! I am not sure exactly where he lives, but I cannot get to second story apt anyway.

    As for storing the trailer, just make do with it being crowded at your place. You can see how the guy expects it to be at his house all the time and you have to beg for it. It seems like you need to repeat why you bought it. I imagine when you are through using it for building and landscaping that he will expect it to be left at his place for his use and you will still have to beg for it and make special arrangements around his schedule.

    I can see why you are annoyed with all this. I lent my live trap to a guy to catch raccoons. A month later, I wanted it back to catch one at my place, and he said he still needed it. I ended up demanding he bring it back! Then, a week later he pointed out I was still not using it and I should have let him keep it longer.

    Be sure to make a generous sized bath in the shop.

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    1. You are so right. We are going to either keep it here at this house or on our property from here until we are done building. Then it is being sold (and we'll use money to buy a lawn tractor we'll need), so that will take care of that. (and I know friend won't fork out the money to buy it LOL). It is so annoying that people cannot just do what they say and when they say they are going to do it. It's going to be a pretty good sized bathroom, for a shop. It will have a sink, toilet, corner shower and room for washer and dryer. I think it's like 10x12 size or somewhere thereabouts

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    2. Okay, I was hoping it was not just a tiny thing since you had one in the house. I remember now that is was going to be larger so you could live in the shop for a bit while building the house.

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  2. I hate when you actually own an item you need but can't use it because someone else has it. I agree with Linda, keep it at your place and your friend can come over and borrow it when he needs it. I had an expensive strimmer here at the house and the ex wanted to borrow it. He took it but it never came back. Found out he had nothing to strim but lent it to a friend who broke it and never replaced it. Ex then wanted to borrow my lawnmower. I said but you have 4 rose bushes and nothing else so no. I guess his friend wanted a lawn mower for free too. Sod that.

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    1. omg! people just amaze me. I could never ever borrow something from someone and not give it back, let alone then lend it to someone else! When DH left it at his place last year, that was something he made sure to say to him - this if for YOUR use, no one else's. And when my DH borrows something he always returns it in better shape than when he borrowed it. At our old house we ended up using a friends lawn tractor for YEARS (long story LOL). Before we gave it back, DH put new tires, tune up, washed and polished it, etc. The guy's like, this isn't my tractor, it wasn't that nice. LOL.

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  3. Contractors. When they have work you can't get in touch with them. They are all the same. They seem to have no concept of time. This build will try your patience but hopefully it will all turn out fine.

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  4. Sorry you are having a hard time right now. Contractors/builders are not easy to work with unless there is a lull in building. Hungry builders work their butts off to get paid.

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    1. that's the problem, he's not hungry because he's busy. Or you get the ones here local in town who are hungry but for some reason act like they are not. We haven't figured out the town ones yet, doesn't make sense.

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