Category: Construction

We have a new roof.

Our roofing contractor who is also doing gutters and fixing the eve’s has completed phase one.  The roof on the upper part of the house.  This included installing two new fancy sky-lights.  One that opens (cranks open, and has a screen), yet we can pop it open and continue to use it for roof access.  This should be much better than the home made sky light that’s been in the roof for who knows how long.

I should have taken before and after photos but I didn’t.

We were a little frustrated at first, we were clear that we wanted ‘English speaking folk’ working on the house.  We’re not prejudice, we don’t care about their nationality, or what color they are.  They can be pink, purple or blue.  Heck they could be midgets for all I care.  But what’s important is that they are able to communicate with us when they are here working on our home.

The crew that showed up didn’t look very American, but we’re assured they are employees and do in fact speak English, they just don’t like you to know they speak English.  Go figure. We recommended this flat roofing company in London.

The job is done, I haven’t climbed up there yet to inspect.  They still have to come back and do the eve’s and gutter work and we’re still on schedule for new doors and windows in the attic.

We’ve moved forward.

We’ve found someone we’re happy with at least to get started.

The first steps in our fix up the home project include a new roof, gutters and soffets repaired.  I’m not sure if that’s how you spell soffets but we’ll go with that.

That’s the first step prior to finishing the Attic and turning it into a bedroom for Michael.

This also includes the addition of two sky lights in the attic, including one that opens so we’ll keep our roof access.

At the same time we’re getting new front and back doors.  The carpenter is also going to re-open the 4 attic windows which were windows once and were sided over.  And put in 4 new windows so that we can put a window air conditioner up there if need be.  (I’m sure we’ll need to).

Now we’re dealing with what doors and what window patterns in the door(s).  I really have no opinion on this, honestly.  But for some reason C thinks I should have an opinion.

🙂

Yep we’re still working on this. Heck we’re still working on getting quotes or bids. It’s amazing how hard this is.

If you’re in construction here are a few tips for you:

If you set an appointment with someone you should keep it. Else, don’t set an appointment you can’t keep. If you need to cancel or reschedule, people understand. Stuff happens. Just be honest. Don’t lie about it. Because when you call back and give a ‘different’ reason the second time and we realize you’re lying, we’ll probably drag you out and waste your time for wasting our time.

Bidding on Home projects.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, or are not sure. Say so. Don’t fake it. If you can’t quote it because you don’t have the information then just say so. When you do provide the quote, remember the people asking for the quote aren’t in construction. We may not know what a ‘square’ is. So telling us something $xx dollars per square, does us no good.

You can say Your roof is x number of squares and I charge $xx per square so the my quote is $YY. But if you didn’t measure the roof so you can’t calculate YY then you aren’t really giving me a bid then are you? Simply saying your bid is $ per square doesn’t help us.

A bid for remodeling or finishing an attic should not read: $xx labor plus materials. That my friends is not a bid.

So far we’ve had a couple reasonable folks out. Some obviously don’t know what to do with old houses. Some seem to think they can handle it. Bids are all over the place. A few more to go

More info later.