Jan
27
Zoom Zoom Zoom
January 27, 2008 |
I’m definitely not going to be done with House #2 by January 31st, but things are definitely zooming over there now. The plumbers finished up all the venting, supply lines, and drain work for the laundry room addition, and the electrician gave me the thumbs up on everything I roughed in over there, so once he comes by on Monday to tie everything into the circuit panel and wrap up a few other loose ends, we can get the rough inspection done and get all that sheetrocked and finished. Praise Jebus.
That just leaves the plumbing for the bathroom addition, which is going to be a bear. There’s really nothing I could have done differently, but if you’re thinking about adding a bathroom addition on a slab foundation that was an addition to the original house and about three feet below the elevation of the rest of the pier and beam house, umm, just don’t do it. Just trust me on that one. My eyes were pretty wide open about just how hard it was going to be, but it was pretty much the only option if I wanted to add a bathroom (which was pretty necessary in a 2000 sq. ft. house with just one tiny bathroom).
It took a lot of searching, but I have to say I’m pretty damn happy with the plumbers, once I finally found them. It’s basically two brothers who do all the work, just started their own company a few years back, and are pretty funny to listen to, as far as good-naturedly jawing back and forth with one another, cussing at each other, and doing paper-rock-scissors to see who has to crawl under the house. Their quotes are in the high-average range as far as the work they do, so I wouldn’t call them cheap exactly but they show up when they’re supposed to and finish whatever they tackle, even when it means staing until nearly 8 PM last night, on a Saturday. They also text-messaged me yesterday morning to tell me they’d be slightly late after needing to chase down some parts, which I imagine might be the first in the history of plumbing contractors, as far as not only letting a customer know they were running late but doing it via text-message.
In other positive news, our furnace guy/electrician came by last Friday to look at the stuff I’d roughed in and brought his wife with him (who pet sits for us when we’re out of town). They’ve done work on three houses for us here in town, so we’re fairly friendly with them in that small town sort of way when you bump into people at the grocery store, restaurants, etc. She asked me what I was planning to sell the house for, as they’re looking to move into town now that their kids are school age, playing sports, etc., as they currently live kinda far out in the country. She didn’t freak out when I said around $145K and came back again yesterday to show the house to her mom, and both seemed to really like it.
Again, not trying to put much faith in such leads as they’re far, far away from a signed contract, but that’d be close to perfect if they truly end up interested, as the husband has been all through the innards of the house doing furnace and electrical work, and they’re very realistic as far as what you get when buying a 60 year old house.
But yeah, in general the enthusiasm pendulum is swinging back towards the positive side, despite all the long hours I’m putting in over there. Cash flow is a little tight right now and I’m dipping into the wonderful world of selling off some stocks, shifting cash around, and putting some expenses on 0% credit cards, but we’re by no means in shaky territory, just not sitting on all the cash that we’re used to.
