a little good news

On a little bit of good news, I did already find out my annual salary increase for 2019. It is $1650 per year. Basically, a $1500 a year salary increase, and with our 10% of salary bonus program, that's another $150 on top of that. Not huge, but honestly, I was not expecting more than $2000 a year, at the very most, so I'm not disappointed. Anything extra is helpful. That will probably be about an extra $100 per month, after taxes. And at least I know right off bat, first of the year, what my salary will be for 2019. No waiting and wondering until February or later, what it might be.

Our gutters guy showed up yesterday to start to install the gutters on the house. I think that is about the only bid that came in under what our contractor said it should cost! Figures it was a guy we found ourselves to do the work. He's from our small town.

We're seeing lots of deer and elk tracks on our property, in the snow. They are apparently still using the game trail that diagonals down the bank to the river. We need a game camera so we can watch them! oh well, maybe one of these days, when we aren't bleeding money on a house build.


My banker lady for the construction loan returned my call this morning, from yesterday. I had called because I wanted her advice. She said we should definitely at least file the claim - we have the insurance and it's supposed to cover something like this. She said it may end up that insurance company goes after contractor or his insurance, but let them figure it out. She also said we should probably consult an attorney, if insurance denies it. So, now I have a call back into the agent. She also said she was going to call our contractor about it, but she didn't really say what her intention was with the call. I told her, my intention of telling her about the issue isn't to throw our contractor under the bus (we still have to get along with him), we just have anyone and everyone in the business, from the subs, (most of whom are also general contractors or have been), the mold company and our insurance agent, telling us this is the contractor's or his insurance's responsibility and we don't know what to do. We don't have $23,000+ to fix it. I then got a hold of our agent, again, and told him to start the claim.

Well, then contractor called DH all up in a tizzy. Mad that he got a call from her, blah blah. They argued back and for awhile, then he calmed down (as he always seems to do). Contractor says he can and will fix it so that it is gone and would pass code inspection. DH said that is really all we have ever been asking - but when he left it with those young guys unsuccessful job of cleaning it up, we felt like it wasn't going to get resolved by him. He said let's make an insurance claim on our policy the last resort. So, now I need to put the claim on hold. Oh what a mess, but maybe that's what the contractor needed - a kick in the butt by the bank to take responsibility to fix it. We'll see. Right now we've got the big commercial dehumidifier going, the drywall just got delivered and will be started putting up next week. Contractor said after the drywall is up, is when he can then put heat into the house and get the floor joists and sheeting dried out.