where we left off

"Livable" is the word everyone kept using. My realtor, my friends, even me. I'd describe the foundation, the plumbing, the electricity, the roof, and then offer or be assured, "...But it's livable!"

The problem with that is that there are people who live under overpasses. Those people aren't hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Upon seeing the house again after several weeks of stop and start foundation repair, any pretense of livability has evaporated, like the puddled remains of a storm let in through new cracks in the walls and roof. The walls have shattered, the doors no longer close, a window has cracked, and the yard is a mess of mud and spilled concrete. The electrical connections outside the house bend up and out at crazy angles, the gas and water pipes hang exposed over giant holes filling rapidly with water from the past few days' nonstop downpour.

In just over two weeks, I'm supposed to vacate my apartment and move into the house. The hall bathroom - which was filthy, but working - is pretty well demolished, needing only the tub and toilet removed before the walls and floor can be torn out. This should be a piece of cake, since the walls in the bathroom have benefited from the same delicate touch the foundation guys used in leveling the rest of the house and are now begging to be ripped down.

I hoped to be at this point at the beginning of September, but.. I hired the wrong foundation company. They told me they'd be done in a week and a half, and they've been under there now for four. They still have to do skirting, assuming the work they've done will even pass inspection and they don't have to spend more time adding piers. I'm not hopeful about the inspection, since from what I can see the old piles of cinder blocks and spare wood have been replaced with new solid concrete blocks and scraps from the new beams, with a couple sonotubes thrown in at the corners to keep up appearances. What was supposed to cost $15K is now costing seventeen, which is actually a minor triumph, as they were trying to raise the price to twenty-one. I would have fired them, but I kept hoping that if they kept working they'd be done faster than anyone else I could bring in to replace them.

Right now I'm wondering whether to contact my landlady and ask if the lease can be extended another month. I don't want to spend the money, but I don't feel like I have enough time. I need to get the house back to at least the standard of livability I convinced myself it was at when I bought it. To do that in two weeks is gonna take a miracle.

contractors

I'm coming to understand the true beauty of Do It Yourself renovations, I think. It's not the romance, or the assurance that everything will be done exactly as you want it (or as near as your skills allow you to approximate). It's that Yourself, unlike a contractor, will not come to your house, spend two hours giving you an "estimate" that involves a lot of time spent telling horror stories about other contractors and explaining why is costs $40,000 to do the job "to code," only to immediately drop off the face of the earth. You always know where Yourself is and do not have to call Yourself every single day to stand a chance of ever getting a final bid. Yourself is extremely capable of holding up work in myriad ways, but refusing to return your phone calls is not one of them.

I've had three companies come out to estimate foundation repairs. I have a bid from one. One sent a bid that involved putting new piers in the middle of the yard and I'm waiting for that to be corrected. One has become simply unreachable. Apparently these guys don't need my business, which works out well because I'd probably never hire them now, but I'd still like to see the estimates to better evaluate the one bid I do have. There's another company coming out on Friday. Having learned my lesson, I am not letting the guy leave until he puts the bid in my hand.

Plumbers, if possible, seem to be even worse. I'd heard that about plumbers. Even the guy who was recommended to me won't set up an appointment. I had an appointment to see another company "sometime today," and had asked for about two hours' notice. When he called today, he asked when I'd like to do it. "This afternoon?" I asked, confused. "Or tomorrow morning would work, I guess.." I added after a brief silence.

"Let's do tomorrow morning," he responds.

"Ok. About what time? Around eigh-"

"I'll give you a call around lunchtime, ok?"

I don't equate lunchtime with morning. Nor, I suspect, does this guy. Within the space of a single 30 second phone call I got rescheduled twice. I'm very curious as to whether I will meet this plumber tomorrow. My money right now is on No.

The one group who seem to be reliable are the electricians. No no-shows, no rescheduling, they've been there exactly when they said they would both times so far. Maybe this is a sign that I should start with the electric and wait for the foundation guys to figure out how to operate their telephones. Unfortunately, foundation really needs to come first. I hope that on Friday, I'll be in a position to schedule something.