Day 17 thursday Friday Day 18

Day 17 Disaster looms and is averted 6 hours later

This turned out to be a very stressful day. The builder discovered that there was an error in the engineering plans. The designer had put a 2 x 12, 2 x 6 and 2 x 12 between the two floors. The engineering plans only had a 2 x 12.

In all fairness, it was very easy to miss as there was no detail in the design plan. moral of the story - go with a real architect.

The design plan turned out to contradict itself. The ground floor called for the existing 8 foot ceilings, but the 2.6 space between the floors meant that the stairs had to come out much further to the point where we would have had very little room to move when entering the room on the ground floor, or the stairs on the second floor would have whacked right into the wall of the bedroom.

I think the reason why there was that much space built in was due to the way the beams are cantilevered. They run north to south and we need to get the duct work for the A/C east to west.

So at 11am, all work was halted and it was a very depressing sight. The men had arrived early and were really going hammers and tongs at it and I had great hopes that the roof would be covered, tarred and shingled by the end of the day.

It was with a sick feeling that I left the house. The options at that point seemed to be to tear the whole thing down and start over. I gritted my teeth at the thought of all the wasted effort and the additional cost and thought some uncharitable thoughts about a design firm whose name I will not mention.

The engineer turned up close to 5pm and we were all collected there - builder, framer, owners and engineer. Fortunately, experience and expertise prevailed and a solution was found which involved moving some non load bearing planks and inserting something here, something there and voila, there was no need to tear anything down.

I was nervous when they started talking about going up the roof and down into the bedrooms and creating a corner or taking up some of the closets. When you've lived without adequate closet space for as many years, you tend to be protective of your closets.

Instead of using 8" ducts, it appears we will now use two 6" ducts.

As for the front windows - which was what really alerted us to a potential problem - Santos the framer suggested pushing out three feet. The engineer thought this was possible and would not compromise the integrity of the house. So we gain three feet of game room, we don't have to do anything complicated with dormers.

It was suggested that I turn the three feet into winter storage closet since my bedroom closets would be a little smaller....

By 6pm, the mood had lifted and we felt significantly better. The weather is turning against us. our builder said, "Today would have been perfect for roofing..."

But tomorrow, they will build the staircase and do other things. CHARGE!

Friday Day 18
It's raining, windy and cold. The men are inside the house, building a staircase, and moving beams about, reinforcing what needs to be reinforced and doing what they can considering the weather. Considering that we are in the middle of Hurricane Season, this relatively light though constant rain is a minor inconvenience. I had anticipate that no work would be done and am pleasantly surprised to find them chipping away at the list of "to do". Undoubtedly, my students probably wish my expectations of their work schedule were as low as those of the men working on my remodel project.