Not sure why we've fallen behind schedule, but we have. The framing crew was there every day that the weather cooperated and made good time. Concrete that was supposed to be poured weeks ago is still not poured. We were supposed to be plumbed and wired by now -- not fully weathered in to begin either. Our roofing crew was making great time and then suddenly disappeared on us -- not sure if they've stopped until the concrete is poured and the porch roof is on or if something else happened. A way too huge, expensive window I did not want and do not need was custom ordered, without my or my contractor's authorization, by the lumber yard -- they're refusing to take the window back and refund my money. I'm currently weighing whether it's best to engage the services of an attorney or to sell the window for what I can get out of it to offset its cost (suing means valuable time spent in court battling it out over just one window.) If I pay for it, it had better be delivered into my possession.
Here's a visual diary of what's happened since my last post:
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| They finished framing the upstairs and rafters were delivered. Putting the rafters up was delayed several days because of impending storms that later resulted in the devastation of much of my state (including destroying the town of Washington, IL that is just 5 miles from my oldest daughter's house!) |
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| The rafters went up and they started sheeting the roof. |
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After the framing crew left for the day, I spent some serious "me time" in my bedroom.
This is the view from where my bed was / will be. |
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| They finished sheeting the roof -- and it rained and rained and rained. |
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| While the roofing crew shingled, the framing crew put in some of the windows and the back door. |
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| This is the back door. It currently opens onto a 10' deep x 2' wide moat that's weeks overdue to be backfilled. |
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| This is the view of Mount Muddenrubble from my computer room window. This should have been used to backfill the giant moat around my house, before now. |
And that's pretty much it, so far. No work was done over the long holiday weekend. We didn't expect there to be. I've had to put off delivery of the tub for the master 4 times for lack of clean, dry garage floor to put it on - that I was told several weeks ago would be laid within the week. We're not fully weathered in - which cannot happen until after the front porch is poured. We're not backfilled. The power company is probably never going to come out when I call again after bringing them out to run the gas service and the site not being ready for it. I'm pretty sure sewage pipes were placed where my furnace and one of my hot water heaters go, so I may have to have all the basement walls ripped out and reconfigured (that or the concrete floor... and the floor is a lot more time/cost intensive to replace.) Our deadline is Feb 22. And because I'm up against content deadlines, as well, I need to be in by Jan 22 at the absolute latest -- if the pace doesn't pick up, I don't see how that can possibly happen, at this point. Especially with weather not cooperating and so many no-work holidays coming up.
And I keep hearing how exciting it must be to be getting a new house. NO. It isn't. IF I had been designing my dream house and searching for a location for it and then found the perfect location and the house I'd imagined building was being built on it -- THAT would be exciting. That is not what's happening here. This is rebuilding what I already had, but different because of code changes since the original house was built and because of errors on one sub's part... not being in my own home while my new home is constructed... designing it without the proper drafting tools and while under extreme stress... hating it because I feel like I was forced to trade my kids' baby pictures for it and being back into a 30 year mortgage when the end of our previous mortgage was finally coming into sight. It's not exciting. It's exhausting. It's taking too long. It's heart breaking. It's stressful. It's expensive. It's also pushed our retirement age back 15 years. AND I get to live in a winter-build. Something I very much never wanted.
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