Flip Thy House

Can I Get a Do-Over on this Week?

Pretty frustrating week on the real estate front, but I guess I was due one without any real hiccups so far on the latest project.

No disastrous news to report, just not much progress at all, as our contractor only really got started on sheetrock yesterday afternoon, with not much at all getting done on the house the rest of the week. For some reason, the city keeps finding nits to pick with the addition plans, despite it being pretty much the simplest addition in the history of humankind.

They also basically nixed the paver driveway plan, as they were requiring a documented and demonstrable high psi in any paver I used, which was going to jack the price up north of $2,500 for the driveway, so we’re in the process of getting quotes for an asphalt drive. A local concrete guy also gave us a bid of $1,900, but I’m hoping the asphalt ones will come in a good bit lower than that. Asphalt isn’t ideal at all, and the least durable/attractive option, but I should be able to find someone who will do it for $750-$1,000, if various estimates I was told are correct as far as what to expect per square foot for an asphalt drive.

The sheetrock delay was the most annoying thing, as we’d already paid for the sheetrock with the sole building supplies store in town (a local hardware store and not a huge big box type retailer), but they apparently had a big order that wiped them out and didn’t set any sheetrock back for us. They promised to get more the next day, then the next day after that, then the day after that, so our contractor finally had to just get a refund and go buy it at a big box store about an hour’s drive away.

Trying not to get too frustrated but it’s going to make life harder on me, as far as tackling all the tiling and painting. On the bright side, I had to make the first interest payment on the line of credit used for this job, which was a whopping $80.73. Granted, any interest payment sucks and is lighting money on fire, but one nice thing about this project is that it doesn’t require a huge outlay of cash, nor hefty payments each month for holding costs, something I need to keep in mind when getting worked up about delays.

I have to keep in mind, too, that weeks like this are inevitable, especially given the fact that we live out in the sticks and the contractor I’m working with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with the work done so far by our contractor, as he’s willing to tackle jobs like this and, frankly, is a lot better suited for this sort of remodel than many contractors. He doesn’t run a huge crew and does a lot of the work on the job himself, but he does good work and has been doing this stuff long enough to pretty much figure out a solution to anything that crops up. And usually an affordable solution, as he’s more the type to fish a perfectly good door out of a dumpster for use later than insisting on everything going into the house being brand new, high end stuff. I wouldn’t use him to build a $300,000 custom home but for projects like these he’s perfect.

But the flip side of that is we’re just going to lose some days here and there, whether it’s one of his workers missing for a day or two because he and his wife are fighting, broken-down trucks, waiting on sheetrock, whatever.  That’s not to say I don’t ride them a bit when things grind to a halt, like this week, but that it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. I could scream and rage and throw tantrums like Armando of tv flipping fame, and maybe finish up the project 3 or 4 days sooner, but in the long run I need him for more jobs like this in the future