Time Crunch
Everything always takes longer than planned. Although progress has been made since completing the roof milestone, it hasn’t been enough progress to call the electrical and plumbing done and get an inspection. That was expected to be done this week, but we didn’t quite make it. Couple that with the weeks of delays we had due to first, the plumbing permit, second the roof fiasco and we are certainly on a trajectory to blow past our original November completion date. Missing the date in and of itself is not fun, when it’s around the holidays it’s annoying, when you’re about to have a baby it’s scary, but if it means having nowhere to go when your lease is up on your rental, it’s downright stressful.
With the stress of that possibility bearing down on us I prodded the builder about the schedule. We tried to take the other delays in stride and not stress about them too much, but now the stakes are too high. The lease on our rental is up in January. We negotiated a six month extension to our original lease thinking that gave us a comfortable buffer, but now that buffer is not looking so comfortable. The builder wasn’t willing to give an off-hand estimate as to when we’d be done which was a little eye-opening and disappointing. I expected him to have a better feel for the schedule. He got back with me later and the answer was 10 weeks putting us moving in just before Christmas. While it’s a relief that the estimate was before our lease is up; we have to take it with a grain of salt. Estimates haven’t been too accurate so far, and that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle-room for unforeseen delays.
I don’t feel it’s fair to be so strict on the schedule for a custom house because it is custom work and much of the house is not like any of the other houses the builder or his subs have built before. I do, however expect that they do as much as they can to stay on schedule, so that’s what we’ll be looking for in the next 10 weeks.
Those paragraphs were a downer. I’m sorry. To make up for it, here’s a sunset picture I took the other day when I was working on the low voltage wiring. I took this standing across the street from the house.
Structured wiring
The low voltage wiring is the only thing I’m doing myself on this house. Not doing everything is a welcome change from all the years of DIY remodeling we did at our old house. I just finished all of that up today. Here’s approximately what I ran:
- 2,600ft of CAT6 cable
- 840ft of CAT5e cable
- 825ft of speaker wire
- 368ft of RG6 Coax cable
Tile
Tile for the bathrooms is the next major design item that will need to be ordered. We picked everything out months ago, but decided it would be a good idea to return to the tile store today to confirm that they have everything and let them know we’re close to needing it. One tile in particular we were worried about. It’s a tile from Porcelanosa that has a dimensional wave texture.
So today, at least was a success. We’re hoping and praying that there are more days like today.