Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Electrician in prison

All I can say is that we have terrible luck with contractors. Eric received this handwritten note from Bruce last week indicating that he's in prison for not paying child support and expects to be there for 1 year.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Team Weirich

Dad and I installed a ton of fireproofing this weekend. Sorry, no pics, too much to do! It's nasty stuff, spun fiberglass, so it sort of cuts into your skin. My innovation was to cut up old socks into Michael Jackson-type gloves under my work gloves, preventing the fiberglass dust from going down my sleeves when I was stuffing it up into the crack between the subfloors and the wall. We almost finished but I still have the attic to do once blocking is installed. That's what our friend Noah was working on, blocking, while Eric focused mostly on running fan ducts to the outside.

In other news, we finally fired Bruce. He's been MIA since 2/5, NOT coincidentally the same day he was paid for the rough-in! Based on the problems we are uncovering now, I don't think he ever intended to finish. However, we fortunately have Helen to finish the job for us (note to self: hire women contractors whenever possible). She was recommended to us by my neighbor on Lamont and did our low voltage work. She's hard working and very experienced. Today she found a laundry list of Bruce's stuff she needs to redo, may of which highlighted his lack of experience, and she charges about 1/2 the hourly rate, so we're really happy about that. We'll probably end up spending more than our contract with him, but DC law allows, in theory, for you to recover the excess costs from a contractor not performing and a homeowner having to hire a replacement. I'm not sure how that will actually work but we'll worry about it when we are done! We're also filing complaints against Bruce in every venue possible in an effort to protect other homeowners.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Snowmaggedon


Snowstorm # 2 is upon us and this one is really windy! I think we have +/- 12 fresh inches on the ground. Eric is one of the few brave people to venture out in it, walking from Lamont St. to Ontario Rd. to clear our sidewalk, feed his bird and work on some drawing details today. It's hard to say when this will ever melt enough for contractors to return to work, but we are trying to order finishes and plan things out in the meantime. My progress for the day was ordering bath hardware online for the basement!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Snow in the city!




This weekend was beautiful but a lot of work shoveling dense, wet snow and continuing with masonry repairs. Thankfully, it's much warmer inside the house than outside. Here are pictures of the house, the street view, and then this other picture from Google images of what we like to pretend 18th Street looks like in this snowpocalypse!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Snowpocalypse!


No one wants to work in the snow! Bruce bailed on finishing the panel wiring. Gil bailed on speaker wiring, but Eric did meet with 2 insulation guys this morning and this is some good planning time for us (bath hardware, wood floors, etc). My plan is to get snowed in at Eric's. This weekend we will crank up the space heaters to get some more exposed brick work done. Eric and everyone else went grocery shopping today in anticipation of the 24" we're supposed to get. Here are the rations he picked up.