Hmmm...it sounds like our contractor is going to cover his screw up with the insulation amount he put in our contract with him. He said the guy he usually uses increased his price from $1 sq ft to $3 sq ft in recent months. We're kind of guessing the change of attitude might have something to do with the guy with the bank who stopped by last Friday to do a check on progress and make sure it's matching what the draws say have been completed. In conversation with the guy asking how it was going DH mentioned how some of the contractor's costs (after we asked and asked that he make sure he had accurate sub numbers before we submitted to bank) for sub work is way off. Like double and more. Especially on the insulation. This guy kind of acted like the contractor should have to honor the price he put in for it, too. He asked DH, well I can tell D at the bank about it. DH said he told him 3 times, no, please don't. It's not going to do any good. We can't seem to communicate with our builder, he just gets angry and blames everything on us, and the bank set our loan limit, so we can't change that. He will just tell the bank it's our fault and we made changes. DH did mention to him though that even though our contractor says we didn't tell him what we wanted for insulation, he is wrong. We have it in email where we told him exactly what we wanted and we told him at a face to face meeting when we sat down to look over our plans. DH said 1) I have email where I told him what we wanted. 2) Why would I put lesser insulation in my house than I had him put in my shop??!! 3) if he thought we were having the foundation crawl space with insulation blankets, instead of having it spray foamed (like we told him we wanted) then why didn't he put in the mounting brackets for the blankets when he did the foundation?
We are having a feeling maybe the guy did in fact talk to our banker lady. Because contractor called and talked to DH yesterday and was very calm and cooperative and said he'll take care of it with the insulation issue, as well as getting all our foundation crawl space mold mitigated.
Monday morning, some local guy who does finish work stopped by our jobsite to give DH his card and see if he needed any work done. So...framer guy (contractors son) asked who it was DH had been talking to and DH told him "some local guy who does finish work looking for work". Well, then when DH was talking to contractor on the phone he mentioned that he and his other guy will be out there as soon as drywall is in, to do the finish work....because his son probably told him some one else was trying to get the work! The labor doing the finish work is part of how our contractor earns his money on this job (on top of the contractors fee he's charging us). He doesn't want us to use someone else on the finish labor work.
In other house news. Months and months ago DH contacted some guy about doing some metal art to put our address on a big rock at our gate entrance. He's contacted him several times and the guy keeps saying he's working on it. Well, 4 months is long enough. DH contacted someone else to do it yesterday. We'll see if this guy fares any better. This is going to be our Christmas gift to each other.
The rest of the windows finally got delivered. These were the special order, triangle shaped windows that are up high in front and back. Roofer is supposed to be back tomorrow to finish the roofing.Painter lady and crew are back this morning to work on painting the trim. Framer is being grumpy because either she needs to use one of the ladders or the scaffolding and DH says whatever she's trying to use he's telling her he needs it (there's only like 6 ladders all around here)
This morning I got my good hair cutting scissors out and cut almost 3" in length off my hair. So much better! Now it's just above my collar bone.
A package just got delivered in my name. I was trying to recall what I might have ordered recently (nothing coming that I could think of). I looked at the shipping label and it was from Key West...well, some good friends of ours were down there vacationing over Thanksgiving. They sent me an amazing hanging glass sign with a rooster on it that says Welcome Friends. What a nice, thoughtful thing to do! It sure made my day.
Uurggghhhhh I couldn't take that kind of stress. I'm just not one to negotiate or stand up for myself in that kind of situation (although I obviously don't have any problem doing that at work!!) and how lovely of your friend to send you such a thoughtful gift.
ReplyDeleteI don't have it in me either, and neither does DH. That's why we were just going to (probably) figure it out ourselves and just get thru this build as fast as possible. I was half expecting to get a call from banker lady (even tho DH told him not to mention it to her) and I was just going to say it's not worth the discussion, because the builder was just lying and blaming it on us and we're too tired to deal with trying to argue with it.
DeleteHe knows well enough he screwed up-good for you both for holding firm.
ReplyDeleteDH told the bank guy that aside from some of the costs being way off, he's not even acting like a general contractor, at all. That one probably got back to him!
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