Location: Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
You may have noticed that it's been a while since our last Khronicle. Well, let us tell you a story...
In May, when we were up in Deltaville working on Rachel, we received an email from the friend who is managing our house. "A supply pipe to one of the upstairs toilets broke and flooded the basement apartments." Yikes!
We gave him a call. He had already arranged for a remediation company to come in and start drying things out. Thank goodness for our friends.
During this time we managed to fit in two weeks of sailing with two different grandchildren followed by a wonderful week long visit with the other four, including the world's most epic pillow fight – ever! Loads of fun, and a welcome respite from all the work we'd been doing on Rachel. We also learned that we have a 7th grandchild on the way! Seven grandkids! Holy molies!
At any rate, after about a month and a half of drying, in mid-July things were dry enough in the basement to begin rebuilding. Both apartment's bathrooms needed to be re-tiled and the remediation crew had removed most of the baseboards and drilled holes in the plaster to facilitate the drying process. So all that needed to be patched, replaced, and painted.
We decided not to renew the lease on the apartment that had suffered the most damage so we could work on it first without having to worry about a tenant. The lease was up on 31 July, so the decision was made to start demolition on that apartment on 1 August, with the expectation it would be ready to re-rent in a couple of weeks. Then we'd quickly knock out the other apartment that suffered much less damage without inconveniencing the tenant too much. Another scheduling quirk was that we could only do 1 basement bathroom at a time so that our remaining tenant could use the other bathroom while his was being worked on.
So in the last week of July we headed down to Blacksburg with Houdini and Wanda. Because the upstairs (our house) is rented, we've been living in Houdini in the front yard for the past month, making weekly trips to a nearby campground to empty the holding tanks. Sigh.
The demolition crew came in and was pretty much done in 3 days. In the process they damaged some cinder blocks in a couple of walls, so we had to wait for a subcontractor to do an estimate, then effect repairs. Sigh.
Finally, a week after originally planned, we were ready for the tile guy. But wait! The tile guy quit his job the day before he was scheduled to start! Another was contacted, he never called back. The 3rd tile guy agreed to start the next day. Yay!
After his first day of work, the tile didn't line up in 2 corners (this should have been a big red flag!). The contractor made him take it out. After 2 more days, the tile at the door into the shower was an inch shallower than the surrounding plaster (red flag number 2!). The contractor made him take it out. He then built out the doorway to the proper dimension. The next day, the door into the shower looked horrible, the drain was a disaster, there were big gaps in several areas, and several tiles stuck out further than others. The upshot is that after almost two weeks of stop / start / undo / redo, the contractor finally decided to fire him because of his shoddy work. Unfortunately, two weeks later, we still don't have a tile guy. Sigh.
Today, exactly one month after work was begun, we are in almost exactly the same place we were a month ago – we still need to demolish the first bathroom and install new tile. The only real progress that's been made is the work that we have done – new paint throughout (except the bathroom of course), new countertops, painted the old wood kitchen cabinets, installed all new outlets, switches, light fixtures, etc., etc. It is very discouraging and we are on the verge of firing the contractor, asking for our deposit back, and acting as our own contractor. Sigh.
To top it off, we still have a few weeks of work to do on Rachel (install a new fridge, solar panel, associated wiring and controllers, etc., etc.) before we can begin to head south. At this rate, we may run out of time and end up having to put her "on the hard" next month, head south in Houdini for the winter, and try again next year. Sigh.
We are managing to keep our spirits up and maintain positive attitudes, partly by looking out Houdini's window at the lovely flowers Julie has planted over the years in front of the house. We can't live in it because it's rented, but we can enjoy looking at it.
But sometimes it's been difficult as we suffer the "tiles and tribulations" of construction....
Best to all,
Mark & Julie
Update 8 September: Yesterday we decided to stick
with our contractor and we now have a tile guy! He's got a great
reputation and he's starting work next Monday, so we're guardedly
optimistic that the apartment might be ready for it's new tenant by
the end of the month. We'll keep you posted.
