| April & May 2008 |
Met with Glenn's chosen contractor... Jay White
of Paul Davis Construction and then with Architect - got preliminary
drawings to review and revise Applied for permit which was rejected due to cantelevered design... Still waiting to find out whats the new plan? |
| June 2 |
Monday
or Tues? Roberto brought a couple of guys by to remove old concrete
blocks, the old joists, and generally prepare for the new. |
| June
3 Tuesday |
Tues or Wed, Roberto came by and worked some more. He saved the old joists for me, and laid them at the far West side of our yard. Thanks Roberto!!! |
| June
4 Wednesday |
Wednesday |
| June
5 Thursday - |
Met with Jay White Thursday to discuss progress, and corrections to house plans including electrical needs? |
| June
6 Friday |
Friday |
|
June
7
|
Saturday - Picked up larger architectural floor plans, electrical plans, and elevations. None of the changes we discussed were on the plans... Guess I need to talk to the architect about that. |
| June 8 | Sunday |
| June 9 Monday |
Ryan
and
another fellow came by at set out the new concrete blocks for someone
else to come and work on, at some time in the near future. I asked if
they were going to put the rebarb thru and vibrate the concrete down,
and he commented that I knew a lot about the process. He said yes,
someone else would be doing that, but that they would do it that way.
They left and came back later, and do some more domolition of the south
side concrete walls. |
|
June 10 Tuesday |
Arron & Ryan are here, and Ryan is going to town on the concrete
wall, removing the old bricks neatly so the new ones will be
structurally sound. Looks like he's really doing a great job. Wednesday |
| June 11 Wednesday |
Nothing happened building wise. I need to book an apt. with the architect to make corrections asap. Too busy today and tomorrow I think. |
| June 12 Thursday |
Nothing |
| June 13 Friday |
Nothing except I
met Jay at the Architect's office to go over the uncorrected drawings
so he could furnish us with corrected drawings and I could feel we were
all going to be on the same page. Jay said he didn't have a lof of
masonry work so had to farm it out, but the masons were working on a
bigger job, and would start our job later today, or if not, the head
mason assured me it would start TOMORROW. |
| June 14 Saturday. |
Nothing. Glad we didn't cancel our company coming over swimming because the masons didn't show up. |
| June 15 Sunday |
Sunday - I sent Jay an email about 'DRY ICE BLASTING" which could remove the soot from the brick wall I think. |
| June 16 |
Masons didin't show up again. I told Jay he
should start looking for somebody else to do that job and he said he
was one step ahead, and already had someone lined up for the next day
at 11 am to come look at the job.Ryan came over and used a pressure washer and washed the sooty brick
wall. When painted, I think it will probably be good enough. Jay said
he was the premier user of the dry ice blasting technology, but that he
didn't think it would be necessary on our brick wall because we'd be
painting it anyway. |
| June 17 Tuesday |
The masons showed up to rebuild the half lof the
brick walls that were waiting for over a week. I thought it looked like
an ok job, but my friend Torres said it looked sloppy to him. He said
he thought it would be ok. |
| June 18 Wednesday |
Paul Price worked on creating forms for the door
to the basement. He used the pressure treated wood left over from the
demolition removed from the floor of the closet area and bath floor
joists, that I'd asked to have saved. It was a shame to see that
pressure treated wood used for that, but I did tell him it was ok with
me. I had a very interesting conversation with Jay, about the rebar in the brick wall. I told him I say some on each corner, but only one piece ssticking out of the center of the south wall. We'd discussed the specs calling for rebar every 37" ... Jay informed me that the basement was not built to code before, with no rebar in the concrete which had been poured every few feet. I told him our insurance covered bringing the house into code compliance and he said not in this case, because it didn't meet code before and tkherefore, the city would not require it, so insurance wouldn't pay for that. I asked how much extra it would cost if we paid for it to be built to code. He said he had NO IDEA, he'd have to pour it before he'd know how much it would cost in extra cement, and rebar. I said after all these years in the business, you can't give me ANY IDEA til after you finsihed the job. No he said, Ms. Abbott. I do hate it that he always calls me ms abbott. When he does I call him Mr. White. I said well maybe I should have another cement person to come and give me a price on how much they would charge to do it. He said I could not do that, because this was his project, and he was to do everything on the project. I said what didi he care, as long as he got his 20% for the overhead and his profit. He said he had to make at leaslt 40% profit to stay in business. I said thats not what I understood our insurance deal was. He said he made up the extra 20% in profits on line items. |
| June 19 Thursday |
Jay ordered 300 feet of rebar and Alan and Ryan
put rebar everywhere I could see, in the concrete block walls...Ryan
put poured concrete slump into the forms Paul made. I realized that no
plumbing was on the plans for the North wall water spiggot, and the dog
washing station and Allen told me to draw them onto the permit drawing
so the future workers can see them. I realized that the current
drawings were uncorrected and asked how workers could start without
correct drawings. He said they'd been oked by the building code
inspector or else they wouldn't be in that box. Yet they had the bay
wall on the back, which Jay said failed the code. |
| June 20 Friday |
Ryan and Allen worked on preparing the cement
block walls putting rebar in them where possible. Unfortunately, they
didn't attach them at the footer, which would have been proper I
believe, but the rebar thru the top of the wall is the best they can do
now that the blocks had been replaced alreadly. I booked a 2pm appointment to discuss the plans with the architect by myself. After a week, he had not done anything, so I figured this was an good opportunity do get them done right. Though the $75 I spent hiring his attention for an hour wasn't that much, and I didn't feel he offered any insight on how the building could be improved, I did get some answers such as that the wind code info was false on the form copy I had and that was very puzzling... He said he didn't understand what Jay was talking about, that the bay wall was not approved. He said he knew of many other instances where such canterlevering was approved. He said this was his first job with Jay, and apparenlty his former architect has left abruptly, leaving Jay in a fix. |
| 21 Sat |
|
| 22 Sun |
|
| 23 Mon |
We had Superior Mechanical, Barrineau, and
Bensons all here today to help us figure out the best solution for our
HVAC. Superior never got back to me yet. |
| 24 Tues |
Alan,
Ryan and Paul were spooning in the concrete wall when I had to leave
for a dental appointment at noon. Several bags of concrete which had
been under the overhang were gone. Charles Locke from Lockes and Lennox came by to discuss our HVAC needs. He felt we should go with a large system with the zone system for each side of the house. The filters only needed to be change annually or more with animals, but lordy they were $250 each! That could be a sticking point. AND something he said bothered me too. He thought we should put the air handler under the house. I said, what if it should flood down there. He said that would never happen. How would he know this? What if a pipe burst. All kinds of things can happen. Our friend Dick Heurn said what ever we do - don't move the ac unit under the house. |
| 25 Wed |
Don't recall any work being done today by Paul
Davis, though at lunch time he sent a subcontractor from Chiefland, FL
to discuss using his service to install 2 systems. |
| 26 Thur |
Talked with Tom of Design House about the errors
regarding wind loads and he said I should call the Allen Nobles
Engineering and ask why the max overhang was listed as 2'. I also told
him I didn't see any specs on the overhang on the back of the house,
and he said he had it as 1 foot, but he would change it to the 4 to
match most of the rest of the house. I think it may have been 5' but
don't have that info handy to prove whether it was 4 or 5. Bill Adams of the Allen Nobles engineering company looked at the paperwork, and said he recalculated the numbers and the hurricane clips should be H11 (or H14 would be better) and that he would inform the builder. |
