Tag Archives: Contractors

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Steady

I want to have my book in my hands in February so that I can give it to people who will read it to children. I’d like some free marketing from other mental health professionals and giving it away (25 copies) is a good effort. Otherwise, I’ll use my website and connect with other authors in the genre.

I think that the Carpenter and Batman are at Burning Man. Thinking about being there gives me anxiety. The dirt, the noise, bringing in water, and the smells.

My ex-wife and I went to tame bluegrass festival in 2019 and realized that we were too conservative for that crowd. Multiply it by ten, and I’m sure that is what Burning Man is like.

However, the former said that he would be building my shed in the summer. There are twenty-days left of summer when he is done with Burning Man. I’d imagine it’s a day or two to drive back, and then maybe 10-hours of sleep in a bed, which puts us at September 6th probably. That means that there’s 16-days left for building a shed in the summer because you train all fall. I’ve grown tired of taking my lawn mower out from under a tarp. I need a little shed on the concrete slab.

My catio took less than two days. It scares my son’s cat, so I’m going to buy fresh cat nip and get in there with all of them. They’ll get some positive associations with it. I’ll scatter treats too.

The company swept the entirety of my porch too. I felt like they were helping me. They left cedar scraps and a few longer pieces and a lot of sheet metal. These can be used for the shed.

I think with several trips to the lumber yard my former sister-in-law could make a shed in a week for me. If she didn’t work full-time, if she wasn’t a conservator on the probate initiation for her niece and nephew who are now orphaned, and if I would even ask her. Which I wouldn’t.

Will the Carpenter wind up building me a shed? I’m incredulous.

Now, let’s talk about Batman. She has worked on our book on 2/15, 6/26 and 8/7. She said that she’d get me a page 8/8 and I emailed about it on 8/15. My email went into the ether. The lack of consistent communication is annoying and is not the way that I roll. So, I’m interviewing illustrators that I would simply pay as a one time thing with no royalties going forward (flat rate for pages) starting in October.

My best friend asked me how long I would wait for communication. I said September 30th. I also will never contact her again. When I run into her, I’ll get a great hug. That’s it. That’s fine. I’ve always been a pragmatist.

Having a table in two-days and a catio within two-days has shown me that complex work can be completed. It just has to be a priority and follow a timeline. I don’t think that I can stomach being fifty and waiting around for people who don’t prioritize working with me.

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Living in a construction site since July 23rd

It’s starting to get really, really old. I told the Crew Boss for painting that Thursday is the final day ever and that there are no more days for my kitchen. I had to tell them the same thing about Wednesday, the 31st, because all the painting was dragging out and I had to get furniture upstairs again. I was being driven mad.

I think that I also have to consider that July has been bizarre. I found on the 6th that my former sister-in-law was murdered. My Aunt died on the 27th; although, we knew May 3rd that given she wasn’t seeking treatment, that was a foregone conclusion.

Anyway, with these deaths, it makes living like this very difficult. This:

It’s like moving into a place that you can’t move into because there aren’t rooms that you can use. I have trouble cooking which is my daily therapy because I have to go downstairs to get skillets and the like. I also have dust and shards of paint everywhere.

Brookyln is coming over this morning to help me hang artwork in new and fresh places. She’s also going to give me feedback about arrangements. I haven’t had her over at my house in years.

That will definitely help. It’s like a barren environment here.

I told LA that she was a bad friend for not renting me a large airstream for the pets and I this month ;). I can’t wait for workers to not be at my house. I’m also excited for the end result and no longer living in a construction site.

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Repairs

I think that I’m renewing my energy. I have a new house loan. I am doing electrical work. I have a new cooler. I’ll have wall insulation in my kitchen and two back bedrooms. We have a neighbor family texting system that I used to find an electrician and begin learning some electric stuff with the help of my neighbor.

Electrical Work

The electrician rewired the basement so that now in my son’s old room the switches just work and are powered. You no longer have to turn on the switch on the west side of the Rec Room. He’s going to make a junction box exchange to the solar box so that the old and defunct Federal Pacific brand breaker box doesn’t function. It’s not that breakers flip all the time or anything, but rather that it’s archaic and not completely grounded. I want a safe house with no risk of fire. Federal Pacific only makes commercial products these days. The electrician also switched out 10 outlets in my house today. He had to replace two switches entirely–one of which had been grounded by the old contractor who remodeled my kitchen in 2004. The electrician explained that 85% of my house is grounded, so it’s really more of a matter of getting a majority of my switches changed to Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) ones. Two in my bedroom had no boxes and were hanging basically, so he had to use new boxes altogether to get those outlets to be GFCI. He’ll be back next Saturday to make the new panel and hook it via a junction box to the breaker that has the solar panels working.

Cooler

I have a new contractor who is great. He had done work on sheetrock, a broken door, and rehung a mirror with tasteful metal clips. He installed a new evaporative cooler on Saturday. All of it, which will include summer setup was under $2500. I’d been quoted 10k for that in 2022 and suffered last summer with no cooler at all. The Realtor told me that she knew of a company who could do it for 7k. I’m so grateful that I’ve found this contractor and his company so I could shave $4500 or more off of that price!

Insulation

Years ago some mice got inside my garage and went inside some walls. It was gross. I have blown in extra insulation 2-3 times, but my house is still really cold. You can feel cold air rushing out of the bottoms of my kitchen cabinets and plates and mugs feel like ice when you take them out. I have given to warming them in the oven before I serve dinner. I’ve found an insulation company that will take out all the old fiberglass, clean and sanitize the attic, seal all the rafters, joists, seams, and baffles in my roof, install a reflective eshield, blow in new insulation to the max level, and then fill the walls in the bedrooms and around the cabinets with fiberglass from the attic down. It’s going to be so much warmer in the morning and no more cold dishes or mugs!

Learning some electric

We’d had a metal ceiling plate with two lightbulb fixtures in it with wires and a pretty dragonfly light fixture in the linen closet for many years. Electricity scares me. My neighbor across the street is the son of an electrician. Today, he came over and showed me how to remove a ceiling plate and expose wires and taught me what a plastic nut for electrical wires is. He wired in the new ceiling plate, shortened the middle nut, tightened it in and then got the new light fixture installed. He did it in 10-minutes. The nice thing is that although it will take me an hour to repeat it, I can help my colleague who almost died get a new plate in fixture in her daughter’s room now. I may surprise her at the end of the month with that as I’m no longer going to travel for a vacation.

Gratitude

I’m so happy to have my own house loan. I’m so glad that my bedroom won’t be cold in the winter and hot in the summer after Friday. I am over-the-moon with the prospect of room temperature plates and mugs. I’m so glad to have a fair contractor that I trust. I’m so happy about my new electrician. I’m going to make dinner for my neighbor (son of the electrician) and his wife right now. I’m going to buy some kosher alcohol for my neighbors who recommended this electrician. I found three pairs of jeans in great shape at two different thrift stores yesterday and they fit me perfectly! I had a good round of weights today. I’m bowling with the gay league again starting on the 11th. I’m going to write a thank you note to the angel that helped me when I was almost t-boned. I forgot to mention that the body shop has finally said that they’ll make my broken mirror right after I wrote on Google about it having noticed that they also didn’t replace my spoiler over my oil pan at all and it’s now off-kilter and has a noticeable hole. Again, my energy is renewing!

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More on the Challenger

I’m an 8 on the Enneagram and it tends to be much better for everyone who has to be around me for me to live in my Heart point of 2. I don’t think that I’ll live there today though because the Contractors want to pay the Caretaker less money. She didn’t ask for her things to be ruined. It’s very annoying.

Similarly, when our plumbing line broke away from the city pipe and flooded our basement, the company hadn’t accounted for the sand–I live on a floodplain–and asked me for more money than the contract that I’d signed. No, I think that you’ll be fine with your 17K. People want their profits to be large when they’re doing stuff in your house. They killed a linden tree with a backhoe.

I’m able to supervise them cleaning her furniture today. The Project Manager will be there too. She doesn’t feel safe without support. My real estate agent would be there too, but I told her that I will keep her apprised of the entire situation and really need her support at the final walkthrough when the work resumes and is actually done. They can’t restart work until they’ve replaced and made good with the Caretaker.

Should you just expect that people have to ruin or destroy things in your house or on your property when they’re doing work?

Image by Laura Shaw from Pixabay