You're back, just in time for another bit of my story. If you're all caught up, below is part 15.
To catch up, here's Part 14: Our nest egg hatched, and it was an ugly little bird with a very large and expensive excavator.
To read from the start of all this, here's Part 1: "How I wound up on this mountain..."
After all the site prep, the power pull, the fiasco with the other building, and the moose, bears, bobcats, and cougars, we were ready to pour the foundation. This is a critical part of the build, we wanted to make sure that it was done before the weather got poopy, and that it was completely hardened when the building started.
Another unfortunate thing that the VID brought us was a concrete shortage, which meant the expense went up. Just like everything else had, including my blood pressure.
This hasn't changed much, it's almost as though the proverbial "they" only want rich people to be able to build things. Which tracks with the current pile of billionaire bullshit we have to shovel in todays day and age.
Nonetheless, the concrete wasn't on us, and there was no contingency in the contract that allowed them to change the price on it. They couldn't pass the cost off to us! Finally, a break. The only downside is that our builder wasn't aware of the conditions up in the mountains where we decided to build, I was, I'd been doing site prep for a year. He though he knew better. He did not. I knew snow and ice were coming in a couple weeks.
We had to damn near flog him to get him moving.
One of the problems during covid was that builders could be selective about which projects they focused on. Across the market it was that way. There were more people building than there were workers able to build- due to a massive labor shortage caused by people getting paid to stay at home through the duration of the pandemic. Who wants to be out in the snow roofing, when they could be inside playing Fortnite and getting a stimulus check to do so? No one, that's who.
So we went to war with the builder. I had game cameras up all around the build site that I could check to see who was being honest about it. And surprise! Someone told us a lot of lies and had to back track when presented with the evidence. The builder started to hate me and my wife at this point. By the end of the build, one of them had an eye twitch and a bottle of Pepto in his lunchbox.
Bonus tip: When you are building, make sure to have some sort of eyes on the build site, so when the builder or his subcontractors tell a fib, you can get the witness or pull out the footage and present it to them.
We rode them, daily phone calls asking where they were at with things, and each time they told us to chill out that it was getting done. It was not. Then one day I checked and there were forms up for the concrete. I didn't call the builder that day. And the next day there were workers, he didn't get a phone call that day either. I had decided that when things were getting done, I wouldn't be calling unless they were being done incorrectly.
I was up at the site moving our things from the storage unit to the shop, so we could close the storage unit, the day the cement truck pulled up. It was a sigh or relief. It was the first of a couple of truckloads of cement. The first two loads went smoothly. I talked to the truck driver and asked about scheduling and he confirmed what the builder had told us. It's common to get different answers between the builders and the contractors, but that time it was accurate.
As I was walking away from the truck I heard one of the men suggest to the truck driver that he should put his hubs in before he brought up the next load. He said he didn't think it was necessary. I wasn't going to tell him otherwise, but spoiler alert, it was.
The third truck load made it up the hill, only just. I heard it coming through the woods with a loud rattle. Too much strain on the working one without the hubs in. I also heard a string of swear words being spat out the window as it pulled up and a man jumped out. He crouched down and looked under the truck and started swearing even louder. They had broken an axel.
The drum was still turning and the cement was still good. They pulled all the work trucks and drove them down the road so they could slowly back the cement truck down using the hill and neutral. Then they poured the cement and continued to swear at the truck. When truck was empty and the workers were screeding the cement, they put the hubs in and pulled the cement truck up the flat area above the house and started working to fix the issue.
I felt a little bad for them, the driver and his friend, but it turns out they had tried to charge more for the cement than they were supposed to. They had a contract with the builder however that prevented them from doing that. Which was good. It kept everyone on the level.
That evening it got dark and they were still up there trying to remove the bad axel and limp the truck back into town. I offered them a ride and they turned it down, they said they were almost done. So I left. The next time I was up there I checked the cameras- they left at one in the morning. The good news was that our foundation, had been poured and we could start the next steps.
Up next, Part 16: My hands are cold! The story of a bobcat, and some mastic sealant.
Cheers!
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