We haven't posted since early December because no work happened 12/4 - 12/30! First Jerry was sick and in the hospital for 2 weeks and then MIA and not returning phone calls or emails, which became more frantic as time passed. This drove me near insanity because he has more of our money than the value of the work he has done to date. I spent about 5 hours of my holiday vacation at DCRA getting our permits (yay - finally) and researching all of our recourse against Jerry, which is good stuff to know. However, it turns out that recovering money and firing a contractor is rarely possible and the best bet is to get them to perform the work, assuming they are reasonably competent. I also learned that his license is expired and his good standing as a DC corporation was revoked for non-reporting in Nov-08, so I'm definitely not paying him the next payment until that is cleared up, not to mention he has a lot of work to do to get to the next payment milestone.
The picture attached is what the back of the house has looked like for about 1 month. Since Jerry missed at least 5 very warm temperate days just while he was MIA, wrapping the back wall with plasticand heating the space are going to be unavoidable to finish the brick and structural work left to do.
Work resumed on 12/30, finishing up the removal of type S mortar from the basement bricks, which is not appropriate for 101 year old bricks. Today repointing with the correct type O mortar should commence today. Eric is in the basement today with Jerry and his guys supervising this process. I've learned that Eric could most definitely have GC'ed this project, but didn't think he had the time due to his real job, although he has essentially been doing so anyway.
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