I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote some more. Then the addition on my house started, or rather didn’t start as advertised, and so I stopped writing. I was angry and frustrated and my writing would have reflected that, so I decided to stop for a while. You see, I consider myself a fun person. Not everyone might think so, but from my perspective it’s a lot of fun to be me. Writing about the trials and tribulations of dealing with Techwood Builders would have been one long rant. You all don’t deserve that.

So I’m back. I’ll post some pics this week and I’ll tell you all about my terrible experience with Techwood, their inability to get things done and how we dealt with it. By April, my relationship with the GC had deteriorated to such a degree that I hired an attorney to act on my behalf, and it still took months to get a few days worth of work completed. It was crazy.

The long and the short: 1) the writing begins anew, and 2) based on my experience, I strongly recommend that you NEVER hire Donald C. Page or Techwood Builders for any reason what so ever. I wouldn’t even hire him to mow my lawn.

I’m back, baby.

I fear that I am witnessing the death spiral of my GC.

7:45 this morning: *knocking on the front door* Thump, thump, thump.

Him: “Good morning, sir.”

Me: “Good morning. How can I help you?”

Him (with a crew of 3 behind him): “We’re here for the drywall.”

Me: “OK. Just load it into the driveway.”

Him: “No – we’re here to hang drywall.”

Me:

Him: “Where is it? The drywall?”

Me: “Beats me. Let me make a call.”

Lovely Bride (on the phone, leaving a message): ” Hi. It’s Susan. The crew is here to hang drywall, but no drywall has been delivered. Call me.”

Me (to drywall crew): “I don’t know what to tell you. If they call back I’ll let you know.”

Him: “OK, sir. We’ll hang around for a while.”

8:05 this morning. Lovely Bride and I are leaving the house to drop kids off at school and go to work.

Me: “I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t heard back from anyone.”

Him (sitting in the back of his truck drinking coffee and messing around with his fishing rod): “OK, sir. We’ll wait for a few more minutes.”

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I have no idea what happened after that. I’ll let you know after I get home.

Here’s a movie documenting the addition going up. This is exterior only. Enjoy.

The Addition

Progress is being made. We’re now under roof with shingles. The break through into the existing house a day or two after Christmas. I’ll keep you posted.

The addition is well under way. Here are the pics in order starting when it was still just an idea, up to this morning.

We have having a modest addition built on to our house. We need more space and, frankly, we need to rearrange the way things are laid out. The house has never flowed very well and the existing kitchen is tiny. We hired a design/build firm after having interviewed several, and we selected this one because they have done work on our street; our friends had good things to say about the firm, plus the design was cool.

We pulled the trigger and parted with some cash, a relatively minor good faith deposit. Then we waited.

“We’ll start in July,” they told us at the outset in April.

“August. Definitely August,” they told us in July.

“Labor Day. And done before the holidays,” they told us in August.

“Next week, probably Wednesday,” they told us two and a half weeks ago.

I called Wednesday night, a week after they were supposed to show up. The one-way call went something like this:
“Hi. This is Chris Moreau, checking in. Call me back and tell me when you’re coming. I want this thing to start.” Forward but not threatening.

They called back while we were at work: “Dumpster will be there Monday. We’ll start then. We can start the deck demo.”
I could have demo’d the deck myself by now. Frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it. I am certain that no dumpster was ordered before I started carping. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. What I want to hear is when the footers will be poured, when the sunroom will be jacked up and refooted, when the framing will start.

They have no cred with me right now. I’ve heard from other GCs that a 90-day delay is not unusual this year since we had such a wet spring and summer. At this point I don’t care. I have run out of patience. You can bet that I’m going to be a full-on pain in the ass as the addition progresses.

My inner project manager is going to get his rage on with this one. I am going to nit pick. I am going to micro-manage. I am going to review every joist and stud, every drywall joint, every window. I am going to review the schedule with them at least once a week. I will manage to that schedule and require a reason when things do not happen in a timely fashion.

I’ll let you know how it goes and I will name names if I am dissatisfied with things. You will hear about it, I promise. For now, I’ll remain discreet. For now.

My little family has lived in our home in the west end of Springfield, VA for over a decade. When we bought the house it was just Susan and me. In the 90s there were three big trees in the backyard, one on the side and no deck. We could barely afford the mortgage then. When we moved in we had little in the way of real furniture – a couch, a few chairs, a queen size bed for us and a double for the guest room.

But nature abhors a vacuum and over time we filled up the rooms not just with furniture but with little people and all that comes along with them. I built a shop in the basement with a really great workbench that’s topped with bowling alley maple, and set up an office in the smallest of the guest rooms. We peeled the wallpaper with pictures of Geese wearing bonnets off and painted the entire interior. I put up crown moulding and laid down quarter-round after we had the floors refinished. I replaced the original basement door that was so leaky that you could feel the breeze through the cracks in the doorjamb. We had the master bath refinished. I built and installed a mantle and fireplace surround. I built the deck out back. It has been a lot of fun for me since I enjoy that type of thing. I’m a tool guy; I fix stuff.

Of course the most important things we added were our children, and now our house is bursting at the seams with people and stuff. Some of it is accumulated junk, some of it is new furniture when the old furniture has not yet departed, some of it is the stuff that I inherited from my mother this summer. We’ve been busy this year trying to purge junk. We’ve rid ourselves of boxes of Barbie stuff. I’ve tried to consolidate all the bits of Lego and have vacuumed up uncountable bits that I missed. I’m going through the basement one shelf at a time and consolidating, sorting, and tossing stuff out. Still, we have more stuff than room. Ten pounds of shit stuffed into a five-pound bag.

To remedy that, we’ve had a few design/build guys out to look at the house. My buddy Bob pointed out that he’s an architect and he’d like to design an addition, which he did. Unfortunately, the economy is in the crapper right now. My wife and I, while still both gainfully employed, work for the same mortgage finance corporation. The fear is that we’ll put the money down on the addition and one or both of us will lose our job. That would put a serious dent in the plan.

Of course we have options: we could sell this house and move into another; we could add on; we could just improve our existing space; we could refinance, take some money out, rent our existing house and buy another.  So many options.

I’m not one to worry much about the future since it has a way of working out, but Lovely Bride’s fear of a single income existence is valid, particularly since we both work for the same company – a company whose fortunes may well lie in the decisions made early in the next administration.

I think maybe I’ll wait until after January 20th to decide. In the mean time I can try to continue picking up.

Decisions, decisions…