It has been a while now since my last entry. Much has happened, little of it good. I was informed by my General Contractor on the morning of February 10th, that he would no longer be working on my project. This, despite a signed contract, he said he ran out of money and that he couldn't afford to pay people already.
This ended up being an understatement. Not only had he given bad checks to two different key suppliers, he had several outstanding bills for things which I had already paid him for. The total amount of these bills are still not known. But they are at least $25K. The project was 85% finished according to him. But it appears, monetarily, it is closer to 75%.
This has forced me to fill in as the general contractor, requiring that I take substantial time of work and resulting in less earnings.
So, I have been pushing hard to try to get this job done by the end of the month, so I can go back to work. But it has been difficult as obstructions keep getting put in my path. These obstructions have taken much of my time, and when I do have time free, I don't even want to think about the project because it is too depressing, so I watch TV instead of writing in the blog.
But this afternoon, I have some time free waiting for contractors, and I am thinking about the project, so I am going to try to bring the blog up to date.
First, let me cover what has happened in the past 2 weeks or so:
1) The immediate problem was that the 95% of the board and batten siding had been incorrectly installed so that when it dried, it would cup off the building. We had a couple warm days and it started warping and popping battens of the barn. I had given the instructions on how to install the siding to the siders since they had never done it before. The instructions I gave were correct, but the siders apparently did not know how wood dries, so they misinterpretted them. And of course, the general contractor was never around, so no one checked up on them.
So, I hired the siders to come back and pull allthe siding of the front and replace it. The cupping was worst on the fron, since that was where the sun hit it. We got extra material from stock at the general contrator's office, before he was able to return the remainder of the material for credit.
On the other sides of the barn, they installed reinforcing plates on the inside so that we could use some large screws to screw the battens down and straighten out the boards. Then, we hung plastic on the front of the building to keep the sun off until it dried.
The cupola also needed siding work, which required renting a large lift to get the workers up there, more money down the drain.
2) Next, we called for a framing inspection. Normally, the inspector we get is pretty cool and not too stringent. But he has not been available lately and they sent out a women how is a real stickler for matching the print, even if it makes no earthly difference.
She called us out, and I guess rightly so, on the total lack of any bolts holding posts and beams together. The general was supposed to have done this as part of the framing, which had been completely paid for. These bolts were very difficult to get in. They required renting a special drill and making our own bolts out of about $500 of threaded rod. The whole thing toke me and a helper 5 man days. Also missing were other bolts and details on the car port.
Last week, we finially got the framing inspection and could proceed with insulation.
3) The insulation turned out to be twice as expensive as the contractor had budgeted for as he had not provided for ventillation in the roof during framing. The advantage is that, because of this, the insulation will be much more effective. It is a spray in foam that hardens in place, covered by normal batts. A bonus in working with tem directly, they insulated the paint booth inside the barn for free. The insluation was scheduled and completed just Monday, Feb, 23rd.
Here is a picture of the equipment used to spray foam insulation on the inside of the roof:
4) Some time in here we ended up paying the roofer $5000 he was owed by the general contractor, that I had already paid him for. This was done to keep the roofer from putting a lien on the house. I had bargained him down from the $5750 he was actually owed.
5) Also in this period it was discovered that the sprinkler contractor had never been paid, despite me paying entirely for the work to the general contractor. This is another $4200. I could not get a sprinkler inspection without paying them, which would hold up wallboarding of the office.
6) We also discovered that the plumber and electrician had not been completely paid and that he was expecting more money.
7) We got the sprinkler inspection and ordered the wallboarding. It turns out that the quote the wallboarder contractor had provided to the general was no good and was $1700 less that it should have been. THis is because the wallboard contractor was not told about the working heught of the building and were promised other work from the general which fell through. The wallboard contractor delivered material yesterday and started hanging today. That is going quickly. But, due to waiting for drying time, it won't be done until Saturday for the barn and late next week for the office.
One nice thing about the wallboarding is that they are going to use a primer/sealer which will leave the walls in good enough shape that I won't have to paint them in the barn. Yeah.
8) We had planned on doing the drainage work ourselves, with the aid of a handyman and the general contractor's tractor. But, two things happened to stifle this. The hard-ass inspector was requioring that the whole plan be implemented despite some questionable usefulness. And, it was looking like the general contractor's tractor would not be large enough for the job.
So I hired the guy who installed the septic system to do the drainage for time and materials. Unfortunetely, the weather turned just then and it has been going slowly. The inexpensive fill material we tried to make work turned to quicksand and supposedly better material arrived with tire destroying rebar still in it.
And, the excavator can only work through Friday. So, right now, it looks like the drainage may not be completed this week as planned.
9) This morning the sprinkler installers came by to pressure test the sprinklers and discovered that the main water valve shutting off water to the office was broken. They said it was due to freezing. I called the plumber out and he said it was due to mishandling. Relacing the valve is taking a bunch more work (read $$$) than expected. And appearently is getting the plumber in trouble with another customer because it is taking too long. He is very unhappy.
10) The garage doors were installed and I managed to save $100 by finding a better contractor than the general had found. They couldn't complete the work on one of the doors because it would have been in the way of the drywallers and insulators. So they will come back to complete. But they look good and match the garage.
We are under deadline to get this finished because I am losing my storage space at the end of February, as well as a place to work on one of my clients work, which requires a bunch of space. Also, I can only take so much time off woirk before money runs out and co-workers forget you.
The outside hasn't changed much. But here are a few pictures:
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