Funmurphys: the Blog

Home Improvement - The Beginning Of The End

Our room annex construction continues. My wife has informed me that she doesn't care for the term addition. It seems that her childhood neighbors had an addition that was never finished - the husband took off before completion -- and served as a junk area. So I promised her I would call it the annex (somehow I figured festering sore was out of the question). When we started, the contractor said four weeks. In retrospect, that figure was unrealistic. But it set our expectations and we figured we'd be done by Thanksgiving even with inevitable delays, even if it took twice as long. When my daughter asked if it would be done by her birthday (in February), I asked which one. The whole thing started two weeks later than originally planned, we lost two weeks while we waited for new roof trusses because the architect got confused about inner and outer dimensions. We lost another two or three weeks (they all blur together after a while) because they didn't leave provisions for the heating ducts, despite our repeated attempts to get them to explain how they were going to hook the new ducts up to the old. Finally they cut up the new floor slab to put in the ducts - which gave us a heavy coating of concrete dust throughout the house. And both these delays slowed the project down even more because the next jobs didn't get scheduled until they were completed. And then the Holidays, which we were supposed to be done by, killed us. Firms wouldn't ship materials. Contractors wouldn't even start jobs if it meant they might have to work in a week containing Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years - three more weeks down the drain.

With the holidays over, we figured the pace should pick up some. Yesterday, my wife had told me the electricians had been there first thing in the morning, so I knew some work got done on the addition, oops, annex. But when I got home, I was overjoyed just to see that the lumber sitting in the front yard for months had finally been hauled off. And then to go inside and see that the painters had been there, and finished - that was heart attack material. Three tasks in one day - I can almost believe we'll be done by the end of the week (the latest estimate). End of next week is more like it, but I can see light at the end of the surprisingly long tunnel. Why we only have the carpet, the bookshelves, trim and touchup, finish the siding (they ran out!), and rebuild the fence to go. Soon I'll have a brand spanking new room annex, and a sea of mud to go with it. Oh yeah, once it's done, I'll have to go to work. Furniture, decorations, and this spring, landscaping. Maybe I shouldn't be too anxious for them to finish.