Slow, Slow Friday at the Office = Two Posts in One Day

My only real hesitation with buying the Creek House was a pretty simple one: I’m kind of worn out at the moment. I ended up doing a lot more of the labor at the Wee House than I’d planned, and can’t remember the last weekend that I wasn’t doing something or other REI related.

Add in getting tax stuff sorted out and off to our accountant, getting the new tenant in the Wee House squared away, brow-beating the law firm that handles tax deed sales for our county into actually recording the deed in my name for the Larry House (which they finally managed to do last, about 6 weeks after the actual auction), and who knows what else, and it’s been pretty hectic of late for me.

But things are finally settling down a bit, as much of the work on the Creek House is stuff I’ve found is best for me to just stay out of contractor and crew’s way, as far as demo, leveling the foundation, and framing in the floorplan changes we’re making.

We’re hopefully taking lessons learned from the Wee House and improving the process this go around. All of this is still very much a learning process for me in many ways, and for our contractor too, as he typically hasn’t been tackling projects this big of late (he did run a larger crew in the past but not with his current crew, in our small town neck of the woods).

One of my biggest frustrations with the Wee House was all of the time we lost from a combination of not having materials on the job site and poor planning, as far as the order in which work was completed, stuff being left half-completed because something was missing, etc. Our sole hardware store in town has to order a lot of stuff and has little stock on hand, and too many times things bogged down while waiting for stuff to be delivered and arrive at the hardware store. It’s about an hour and a half drive, round-trip, to the nearest Lowes/HD, and my contactor would apparently rather eat crushed glass than make that drive.

Nothing was hugely delayed, as I’m mainly talking about a half day lost here because they ran out of insulation, or a morning lost here from re-framing the opening for the French door because when it finally arrived, it was 2 inches larger than it should have been, etc. But that stuff adds up, and I’d guess that we lost at least 1-2 weeks from the cumulative effect of stuff like that.

This time around, we’re trying different things to address that. The primary change is that I’m meeting with our contractor early, every Monday morning, and making a list of anything he needs for the week that the local hardware store likely doesn’t stock. Then, that morning, I go and buy it, so that there’s absolutely no question we’ll have it when needed that week. In an ideal world I wouldn’t have to babysit the process like that, but I’m more than happy to do that, if it keeps things moving.

Another change is that for stuff we do buy locally, the hardware store has agreed to bill us on a monthly basis. While our contractor wouldn’t admit this to me directly, I know some of the delays were more a cash flow issue, as far as him using the most recent draw I’d paid to him for labor and not having enough for materials. Not in an intentionally sleazy or scheming way, but more due to poor planning on his part, and the fact that he won’t pay out of pocket for anything and doesn’t believe in having credit cards.

(If you’re wondering why in the world I’d put up with the above in a contractor, well, it just sort of goes with territory. All the local contractors I know run a crew with 2-3 guys at most, and pretty much tackle smaller jobs here and there. Living in a small town has lots of advantages, but professional, well-funded contractors with an army-like crew that can bang out huge renovation projects in a few weeks simply don’t exist in these parts.)

Another big change, which he’s not thrilled about but I insisted on, is that we’re subbing out some of the work on this job, especially the sheetrock work. He sees it as a point of pride that he’s done just about everything in the world, construction-wise, and can do just about everything in the world. He also wants as much of the work possible that’s done to go to his crew, as they’re primarily working on just this project.

But we just can’t spend weeks on stuff like sheetrock that could be knocked out in a day or two by another crew, especially when that means that our guys can be tackling other stuff simultaneously. I’ve tried hard to get him to see the bigger picture, which is that he could actually make more money by subbing some of this stuff out, if it means we finish a week faster here, two weeks faster there, and are therefore able to tackle an extra house or two each year.

On his side of things, he’s making his guys work 8-5, Monday-Friday, which includes a mandatory unpaid hour for lunch. The last project got messy as far as guys disappearing to take care of tickets, run errands, get trucks fixed, you name it, then working on weekends to make up time. Which works, in theory, but a lot more gets done when the full crew is there working all day, as opposed to the same hours being put in but strung out throughout the week, when just one person was working on something, etc.

Nothing huge and/or earth-shattering, but hopefully some tweaks that’ll speed up things. We’re still waiting on bids for the plumbing and HVAC installation so no complete budget/timeline yet, but in general I’m looking at a rehab budget of about $40,000, with a goal of being finished and having the house listed by June 1st.