I wish I had more news to share. This process has been so
painfully slow that I want to scream, or cry.. or both. I know we will have a
home when this is all done, but right now that feels soooo far away that I can’t
even imagine it.
Anyways.. FYI, I’m not in a good calm mood today. So please
excuse my frustration.
This has just been delay after delay. So, the foundation was
re-done late October, but there was another error made by the foundation crew—they
left an air vent in the bottom of the foundation on one side, meaning water can
seep into our crawl space from the surrounding ground. We are STILL waiting for
the foundation guy to come back to get it done. I mean seriously—it’s been OVER
a month.. WTF is the hold-up dude? Can you not just patch it with concrete to
get it done??
Last week Graham and I had our breaking point. Graham and I
usually balance each other out. We have a very nice symbiotic relationship where
when one of us gets stressed, the other is calm.. But not last week. We built
off each other’s stress and finally decided to email our project manager with
Lexar. We have not heard a word on when the framers were scheduled, when the
foundation guy was coming back, or even a general completion date for the
house. We have not even met our new project manager at all. We don’t have the
amended floor plans for a slight change for our storage room. I have been trying to arrange a new tile floor set-up for over a month, and a color change of bathroom cabinets.. and I’m the one who has to email and remind them to email me back.. Is it just me or is giving a week between emails being extremely lenient? In this digital age where we expect emails and texts back right away, a week is more than enough time to respond. So, we sent a
firm and frank email to our project manager describing our frustrations and
lack of communication.
To our project manager’s credit, he called us right away
after receiving this email. It was 8:30 at night on a Tuesday, so that was
unexpected. He said that the email blindsided him because he thought he had
communicated with us regarding the hold-up with the framing crew. Surprise—NO,
he didn’t let us know the framing crew may take a while to get out to our house.
That really upset me, and it was quite insulting to not be notified of
potential delays.. especially when the delays affect our house’s building
schedule right now. We feel like the red-headed stepchild of our Lexar office,
because it feels like we are being neglected. WE are not the ones who have made
errors or caused delays. Anyways, he apologized and emailed us an update the
next day.. but really, it was damage control because we were still both very
upset.
Phew. Now that I’ve updated you on the negative.. here’s the
positive: our foundation has been backfilled and the footing drains have been installed (although both of these were delayed due to the snow--in November--when the machines got snowed in). Our retaining wall has been built. We haven’t been able to take
pictures of it because of the rain and our schedules. Our dirt guy is seriously the best. If you have excavating needs, Steel
Justice with Justice Construction in Graham, WA, is awesome. He is honest and
hard-working. We highly recommend him. We showed up at our house on Wednesday
night last week before Thanksgiving, and he and his crew were putting up the
retaining wall in the dark, the mud, and the rain. He made some further
recommendations for the wall and for soil stabilization for our slopes. I will
definitely take some pictures this weekend when we can see it in the light.
Our fire hydrant was installed a few weeks ago. The great
and very petty thing is that none of the people that will buy the lots around us will be able to use it for fire code credits for building their new houses. It’s
my $8K hydrant, thank YOU very much.
Our framers are set to come next week.. hallelujah. I wonder
if they’ll be delayed too, but hey, the weather has been dry on and off for the
past 3 days. So, hopefully they’ll get finished with their house now and move
on to ours. I watched this framing video on YouTube and I got super excited
because our house will actually start to look like a house! Our excavator plans
to lay more quarry spalls past our construction entrance because the rain has
been relentless over the past month and our lot is now pretty muddy (no
standing water though—woohoo!). The rain in the PNW has not bothered me as much
as it has now because of the house building project. I literally prayed on
Sunday for the rain to back off a bit, and much to my surprise, it has!
I hope to have more positive posts in the future, but I’m just
here wallowing in my misery and anger. Maybe it’s because I ate a protein bar
and Granny Smith apple for breakfast—super lame.
