Waiting..................................

This blog is supposed to be about our house building experience. I originally thought that I would only post when there is new stuff going on to talk about, but I have changed my mind. Even though NOTHING has happened with the house building, I am experiencing some emotions associated with WAITING. I HATE it!!!! Those who know me well might say that patience is not my strong suit, and that would probably be putting it mildly. I usually want things to happen right away whether they be eating when I am hungry, making up when fighting, getting a new CD when I hear a song I like, going to the doctor when I think I have the Ebola Virus, etc. So, this WAITING has been an exercise in patience and I am failing. I don't know the reason for the delay. The lumber was supposed to have been delivered 10 days ago. Every night I get home I hope to see a frame started, or at least a pile of lumber waiting in a pile. Alas, that hasn't happened. So when I get home and see no progress I get cranky.

Let me switch tracks though and try to look at this from an optimists angle. Demolition work has been progressing ahead of schedule. Big thanks is owed to George (Rich's mom's husband for those who don't know), who is retired, and has done a lot of work during the days we've been at work. The rubbish pile has grown fairly large and we aren't even putting everything in there. We have been salvaging all the plywood, framing wood, windows, and doors for future use or donation to someone who can make use out of the supplies. Only sheetrock, insulation, tar paper, roof shingles, and pressboard siding have been thrown away. For those wondering what we're doing with all that trash, we've created a bin out of plywood. The reason we have not rented a big rubbish container is that they charge $559.80 for a 5' tall, 8' wide, and 20' long roll dumpster. That price only includes keeping it for 2 weeks. Then the cost is $3 additional/day. So we are storing the trash ourselves and will order a dumpster when we can just pay one fee.

So, just now, I broke down and called the builder. The lumber is going to be delivered Monday, October 1st and framing will commence Tuesday. The reason for the delay is due to the window people. Apparently, they would not have been able to deliver until next week anyway and Bob (of Wilcox Homes) wanted to get the house dried in all at once - instead of having the framing up and just sitting there baking in the Texas fall sun, potentially warping. Makes sense to me. I am fine now with the whole patience thing knowing a timeline. I hope I am not a nag to my builder, but then again it is my (I mean our) money and I think I deserve to know.

Back to the demo that has been done.....We've completely torn down the front addition. For whatever reason, there was an approximately 8" high concrete "lip" that ran the perimeter of the outside of the addition. Rich thinks that they originally used the addition as some kind of patio or pen and that they built a raised lip to keep water out (?) rather than adding more concrete. This area is about 10' wide by 40' or 50' long and it would have taken a lot of concrete to make the whole thing 6" or more above the ground. Anyhow, this was probably one of the more irritating components of all the demo. For about an entire day Rich broke parts of this wall into bits and chunks with a sledgehammer. Then, for the last half, he decided he could hook one side of a chain to the front of his Jeep and the other side to the rebar in the concrete. Then, he just backed up and yanked about 20' worth of this concrete out and dragged it to the concrete rubbish area. How we're going to get that in a trash bin, I have no idea.

When I am doing my part of the demo work, I usually imagine I am a serf in rural England. I have been picking up all the litttttttlllllllle tiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnny pieces of sheetrock, insulation, siding for the trash pile. Last weekend I filled several wheelbarrow's worth of sledgehammered concrete and went back and forth between demo site and concrete rubbish site. Once, I filled up a small Craftsman trailer full of rock. (I thought of my father, with new respect, and his stories about having to move rocks from one pile to another when he was is in prison, I mean a kid). Rich hooked this trailer up to his Jeep and sloooooowwwwwwly drove it to the rock pile. In the process, the wheels of the trailer started deflating and bending ever so slightly inward. Then, he attempted to back up and lets just say that didn't initially work. After some adjustment, involving a jack and a cinder block, he was able to back the trailer up some 15' to the rock rubbish pile. Then the rocks were released in a nice cascading trail that led from the base of the rock rubbish pile to 10' away from the pile. Needless to say, I was not very excited because then I had to pick up the same rocks all over again. From then on I decided the wheelbarrow was a much better tool for product placement. And, on the bright side, I could skip of few days of weight training at the gym with all this heavy lifting and shoveling (good for the abs).

I will try to post pictures of demo and lumber on Monday.