Time Flies When You’re…
...way over budget, way behind schedule and being crushed beneath a mountain of debt. Okay, we’re being a little dramatic, but here it is in the middle of October and we still haven’t gotten this home on the market. Just to give you some perspective, our goal was to have this thing listed by the end of August. Truth be told, we sort of had a perfect storm of issues that have really held us back.
Firstly, although this is our eleventh project, we’ve never done one this big. The ones before hovered around $100K, but we’re well over $700K with this one! Secondly, all of the previous projects have been in fairly small towns where the permitting stuff was pretty straightforward; this is not the case in Dallas. Third, since we are fairly new to Dallas, we had to find all new contractors---and inevitably, to find the best contractors, you have to go through a number of bad ones first. Lastly, we both had full-time jobs and did not want to hire a GC (general contractor).
One thing in particular that's been very annoying to deal with is a specific plumbing contractor who shall remain nameless. All the difficulties above have been a cakewalk compared to dealing with Stan (name changed to protect the guilty). Stan has literally and singlehandedly put us behind schedule by at least two months. Call after call and text after text Stan assured us that he did this or that, and that he would be done no later than X-date.
Finally, after suspicions of theft and even outright lies to our faces, we had to part ways with Stan. And to make matters worse, when we went to the city to change contractors (something Dallas requires us to do when there is a termination), guess who the lady is that processes the paperwork? Yep, Stan’s lovely wife! Stan’s poor workmanship is still keeping us behind schedule even after he’s gone; other non-related plumbing trades are coming to us saying, “Uh yah, we don't know what you had done here, but we can’t put this or that in until you fix this pipe work.” Stan! What tha heck! We'd like to plumb our boots into your personal cleanout drain!
Anyhow, I digress… Suffice it to say, issues aside, the house is really starting to pick up steam---as you can see from the pics---now that Chayce is out there full-time. I’m half way through this semester of interior design and loving every second, and he’s coming home covered in dirt and sweat and also loving it. So hopefully that’s a good sign. Stay tuned for some radical before and after pictures because they’re just around the corner!
