Sunday morning

Friday was an exhausting day, just mentally. Thursday the framers started building our covered front porch. It's a timber frame style. They still also have to build a big one over part of back patio. I had zero idea the painter lady was coming mid day Friday to start staining it. They were still working on it Friday, anyway. Then that morning DH says she's coming to stain it and no one has talked to me about what stain I wanted it. Apparently DH told her just to use the same dark stain we used on the shop tongue and groove soffits. Um..no! That's not what I want. So, phone calls ensued. Painter lady was helpful, for the most part, and I sent her a picture of what I was thinking in terms of stain color. I wanted a warm/honey looking stain. Not brown. Plus, as she pointed out, that dark stain would look even darker on the timbers because they are rough cut, where as the tongue and groove soffits were smooth and sanded. DH was being kind of a butt about it to me. I'm like no one told me they were staining it already. And every time I try to bring something up with details of what I want, they tell me to wait, they aren't to that part yet.



Then we got the bid from contractor's insulation guy. $12,000 over what contractor has. Hey at least it's better than $22,000 over, which is what other bid we got, was. Good grief. And the contractors HVAC guy still has not come out to tell us what we are getting for the system, what it REALLY costs. We've been waiting 8 weeks now. I called up the contractor. Let's just say it was not a good conversation. Before I could even get what I wanted to say out, which was the bid is way over, so we're going to need some help figuring this out, (trying a nice approach) he blew up on me, all defensive. It's all our fault, we didn't tell him we wanted this or that. He can't control the costs being more when we are changing what we told him we wanted. blah blah. So, I took notes of everything he was saying, so I could tell DH this is the "reason" for the higher bids. DH has emails where he specifically stated what he wanted for insulation - spray foam and batting. He says he also specifically recalls seeing our friends crawl space/foundation (a house this contractor built), where they had spray foamed it and DH had told contractor I want it just like J's foundation was insulated and he had said that was a good way to  do it. Now he claims he knows nothing about us wanting these "extras".

Then he has the nerve to say "and your windows were $8,000 and I had to pay that out of my pocket". I'm like WHAT?! Why didn't you get a draw from the construction loan to pay for them them? He was like well, the bill came on the 4th and it's due like the 10th, so I covered it, since it's due now. I said, well, I thought that's why we've hired a licensed contractor - you have accounts with all these building supply places and then submit for draw. And do I really believe he didn't get 30 days to pay it, since he has an account there, so he'd have time to get a draw request in? No, most likely it was because he was on vacation last week and didn't get a draw in before it was due to the building supply place. It's not my problem he's unorganized and can't plan out putting supplies on his accounts and getting a draw before they are due.

He's being a complete jerk. He did finally calm down quite a bit the second half of the phone call, but he's just an idiot, really.  Nothing is ever his fault and if you question him about anything he gets all defensive. He has not even been out here once since the house started getting framed.  DH did thank me for calling him and dealing with him.

Yesterday we went into the city and looked at some more gas fireplaces. I think we've narrowed it down and found one we both like. Plus it will also heat, so if our electricity goes out, we can still have some propane heat coming from this. I did order the "fake" little electric fireplace for the upstairs loft sitting area from Amazon. It has really good reviews and was only $140.

 The roofer was supposed to show up at noon yesterday and get started again. Now he's supposed to come today. Painter lady and her "crew" (a son and his girlfriend) are here again. She's trying to finish up, mostly because of the weather and these need to get stained to protect them, while she says the contractor wants her doing an indoor job next week somewhere else and she said she's trying to tell him our outside work is the priority - she can do inside work anytime/any weather.

The weather is supposed to warm up a bit this coming week, mid to high 40's during the day, and still be sunny, so that will help a lot. This building is not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. Would I do it again, probably not, unless we could be our own general contractor and have more control and not be relying on someone else to get it right.