I told my husband that we are now officially living in a trailer with two toddlers. He said that sounds like a horrible idea and he isn’t sure why we ever thought it was a good idea. A baby and a toddler seemed not so bad. Two toddlers sounds like a circus. It mostly is, but honestly it still really isn’t that bad.
Here’s the thing, we are somehow both pretty easy going about the situation. Those that know me (especially at work) are probably thinking (or even expressing out loud) BULLSHIT, but it’s true. I’ve never been afraid of dirt, camping, port-a-potties, bugs, etc. Having kids has taught me that I am never actually in control of any situation anymore so there’s no need to try so hard to be 100% in control. Those two combined have somehow translated into living in a trailer and not having once thought “what the hell were we thinking, we have got to get out of here!”
I keep getting asked how many times I have just burst into tears and there was really only one time on my way to work this week that I was so frustrated about the situation that I cried. Then I got to work and there was enough other issues popping up that I just compartmentalized it and focused on those issues. Work has been a good distraction to chaos at home.
My husband told me that this blog is sad. I asked him if he thought it wasn’t sad or if I was making it more sad than it was and he said no, it’s just clear how frustrated we are, which is true.
We are two months in and they finished pouring the foundation yesterday. This is exciting, but the sloppiness of some of the work just pissed me off. It’s not like this is a small project and a few thousand dollars, it’s a huge investment and it’s a home for our family that I hope to stay in and make memories in until the kids move out.
On Monday, I got a call from the contractor that they officially put the subcontractor on notice that he needed to be done by Wednesday or would get charged a daily penalty. This naturally lead to some nasty phone calls between the two and my contractor called me just to make sure I was aware and to ease some frustration about the pace of work.
They sped up their work and they did some things that were down-right sloppy and they continue to damage all sort of things on our property in the process including caving in the street at the water meter, running over and knocking loose some curbing around flower beds, and my personal favorite, damaging our walnut tree to badly with the excavator that a huge branch came down in last night’s storm. This is sarcasm for those wondering.
I’d post pictures of the foundation, but I will be honest that I don’t want to because I don’t need anyone else’s opinion that it’s not good work. We already know.
The result of this work was a very frank and forward email to our contractor basically saying we expected more and are overall disappointed. Our contractor responded well to this and sent us a very reassuring email that they will work to make it right and address any issues.
So here we stand with a foundation that is almost finished and a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed and a long list of repairs to make as a result. It’s sad and frustrating, but I am hoping this is the bottom of the barrel and it’s only up from here.
I initially hesitated in starting this blog for this exact reason which is that I expected there to be super crappy parts of this project and sharing them all isn’t exactly fun, but it’s honest. I’m pretty sure this process will be like pregnancy and childbirth where you forget just how shitty it was later and when people ask you about it you tell them it wasn’t that bad even though it was awful. At least I have this blog to show them and it’s not as graphic as a child birth video!