No complaints at all so far in regards to House #3, as our contractor has been banging away and making good progress on all fronts. I’ve spent about $5,000 of my $17,500 budget and so far we’re slightly under budget and about a week ahead of schedule, with a good chunk of the major work (foundation leveling, interior framing, and rough plumbing) all knocked out.
The only hiccup so far is the electrician is being a bit squirrelly, but he tends to be squirrelly, especially on a job like this that he can knock out in a day, so I’m not too worried about our contractor eventually cornering him and forcing him to get all the rough electrical finished.
It’s been a welcome change so far to be able to be pretty much hands-off with everything personally (other than some of the initial demo work I did), but it’s going to catch up to me with a vengance in a week or two, as far as the stuff I plan on tackling myself (tile and paint and refinishing the hardwoods) all coming due at pretty much the same time. But it could definitely be worse, and it’s easier for me to motivate myself for such things if I know I can knock it out in a week of insane work, as opposed to dragging out stuff over several months of working on weekends, etc.
Very pleased so far with the line of credit I set up for this purchase, as it’s been a very smooth process so far. I was worried about delays in getting reimbursed from the line of credit for money I’d spent on repairs, as the process we agreed on was that I’d foot the initial bill out of pocket, submit receipts and invoices to the bank for approval, and then get reimbursed from the line of credit when the invoices were approved. Which was fine, but I was slightly concerned about approval dragging out and being out of pocket for the repair costs for an extended period of time. So far, though, it’s taken less than 24 hours for the bank to approve the repairs and transfer the money from the line of credit to my personal checking account, so no complaints at all so far with handling the purchase and renovation of this property through the line of credit.
Our contractor and his main helper Will were working on Saturday to knock out some stuff and I dropped by to check out progress. We got to talking about the first contractor I used on House #2 (before giving him the boot after way too many excuses and too much unfinished work, who shall henceforth be called Deadbeat Contractor), who is also Will’s ex father-in-law.
I had found out later that Deadbeat Contractor had spent time in prison in the past for getting busted too many times with cocaine (and also pawned his wife’s car on two different occasions to keep himself in coke), but he’s also apparently had warrants out for his arrest for years, mainly for stupid things like driving on a suspended license, not paying speeding tickets, etc. His business has apparently dwindled down to the point that he’s got no crew and is just doing odd jobs himself, about to get evicted from the house he and his wife live in, and is considering turning himself in to serve his time and not have to deal with, you know, jobs and rent and bills and crap like that.
Which is both kinda funny and kinda sad, but I suppose more funny than anything. I just find it pretty amusing that when he first started working with me he was spending big bucks for a full page ad in the local paper, had a new shiny truck with his company logo, name, and phone number plastered all over it, custom shirts for himself and his crew, and was too busy getting calls and giving bids for bigger jobs (such as doing work for the town’s mayor) to finish my project, which was the real breaking point more than the work itself that he did. And, all that time, he didn’t even have a valid driver’s license (and hadn’t for years), with multiple warrants out for his arrest.
Maybe there is something to that theory of hiding in plain sight after all…
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