Lose the Battle, Win the War

At some point you just have to give up...

We had them completely redo the heating coil in the bathroom floor. They had specific instructions that we were to approve the placement before proceeding. We approved it with one caveat -- that it needed to be moved closer to the corner where the sink meets the tub. That's right where someone will stand so we need to make sure the slab stays warm there in the winter.

Well, we came home from a long weekend away and found that the coil had not been moved, and that it all had been mortered over.

Unbelievable.

They had some lame reason why it wasn't feasible to get it closer (a point we've been generally battling with them all along) so we finally just gave up. To tear it all out again and start over would be a big undertaking and delay the project even more.

So we just gave up on it. It's close enough, and much better than it was before. We just want to get the project moving so we can move back into our bedroom sometime in the near future.

And this is how they beat you down. At some point you tire of the battle and are willing to accept less than the ideal.

Photos below show the tile being placed, with part of the coil still visible in the top one.

And Then Life Happens...

The events that conspire to make up our lives often teach us lessons. Amidst all of our frustrations with the house projects, other close friends are enduring far worse. This is yet another reason why I try not to get too terribly gripped about it, and especially why I try to be patient and sympathetic with the dilemmas of the workers. Though it is very frustrating at times, in the grand scheme of thing this just isn't really that big of a deal.

For Your Toes

Heated floor coils going in.

Any guesses as to whether they got this right?

Hint, is the spacing between all of them consistent?

Sigh...

Retrograde

Here we are reverting back to an earlier stage of construction to redo the tile in the shower.

Liane did use this as an opportunity to make a different selection for the glass tile. The stuff we had picked out we liked a lot less once it was put in.

Back On Track

...which for us means the wrong track.

Some new work has been done. There is now some siding up. They are having to put it over the cedar siding they put up (that we didn't want) because the windows are sealed in and the Project Manager fears it would ruin them to pull them out and start over (which is what we really wanted). We acquiesced on this point because,  A) in the grand scheme of things it's not that big of a deal (the worst side-effect is it will cause the siding to hide a little of the trim where the wall meets the soffit), and B) we just don't want to be total jerks and waste a lot of money/product.

The first thing I noticed when I walked out was that they had a box for the siding sitting on the porch. They bought siding? Why? The plan was to use the old siding from what is now the inside part of the porch. Then we noticed the siding is different. From 20 feet away it looks fine, but up close the grain pattern is totally different. Not a huge problem, I guess, but seemingly an unnecessary one.

We speculated that maybe the old siding was discontinued and therefore new trim and corner pieces can't be obtained. Nope. A little research ruled that out.

Upon calling the Project Manager we learned that he didn't know we still had the old siding.

Really? We told you this. The plan from the beginning was to reuse it. In fact, we commented that we didn't understand why they left it up in the attic where it's hard to get to. Normally I'd say that this plan was never communicated, but then....why did they store the old stuff at all if they weren't planning to use it. Aren't these the same guys who put it up there in the first place?

What I'll never know is whether they were planning to just add the new stuff to the bill. And now that it's attached to the house, and therefore used/ruined, it probably will still end up in the bill (hidden) somehow.

So it's been over a week since anything has happened, and the one thing that did happen has to be redone.

Nothing summarizes this ordeal better than that statement.

George Carlin was Wrong

In his legendary rant about "stuff" (of which there were several versions) one of George's declarations was that we move into new houses to allow room for your stuff. He's largely right about that of course, but the real purpose of the move is, as articulated in some versions of the rant I've heard, to make room to buy more stuff.

Well, this is the part that Liane seems to have latched on to. She was buying "stuff" for the new house two years ago, and continues. Problem is, the new house is already full of our existing stuff. Either we didn't do it right, or George got this part wrong. We aint got no room to buy more stuff!

I've already made a few attempts to curtail the buying of more stuff. Finally, as we just sent a few items back for return yesterday, I may have made some headway on this. 

Kryptonite

Not sure about the dog, but whatever. You get the idea.

Still no progress whatsoever. We're going to have to turn up the heat....again.

We thought maybe we had a super hero in this most recent project manager, but alas nothing much has happened. Our job appears to be the kryptonite for even the most capable people. We do not understand why, and nobody can explain it to us without a lot of double-talk and rambling on. We'll probably have snow on the ground before it's all wrapped up. As skeptical as I was going in to all this that would have even been a surprise to me a couple of months ago.

All Quiet on the Front

No news. No word. Two decisions were in our court. Liane e-mailed the new, new Project Manager today. No word.

Not panicked yet. Just seems like we ought to be hearing something on a near daily basis at this point.

Control 4

I haven't talked much about it yet, but my A/V system is working out pretty well. The heart of the control is based on a Control 4 system. Very powerful stuff. I'm only using a fraction of what it can do. Below is a screen shot of a little application that runs on my computer. I can control everything in the house from a series of screens there. There is a similar app that runs on my mobile devices, and there are three hardware remotes that normally stay in strategic locations in the house.

Gone like the Wind

Well, that didn't last long.

I got home yesterday and noticed all of the tiling equipment had been removed, and the post it notes were removed from the tiles. Looks like Hugh is off the job, presumably as a result of a conversation with our new project manager. Did he quit in frustration or was he fired?

Guess we'll find out soon. I think we have a meeting with the project manager later this week.