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Leisa and I stopped by the house on Monday evening and
noticed that someone had filled Brittany's tub with water and left it.
It's not too exciting, but where else on the internet can you see a
bathtub full of water?
That's pretty much it for photos of completed work, so far. |
| As Butt-head stated
above, this week has sucked more than any week has ever sucked before. And
it's all the fault of Don, the building inspector.
We got red-tagged last week for not having stamped plans. Mark called for another inspection so he could begin hanging drywall and pour concrete. Don came back out. He pointed out several "issues." The first concerned stamped plans. Even though the plans provided by Bob are identical to the rain-damaged plans, Don says we have to get the copies stamped by the city, too. The next issue is the barbeque island. He says we can't have gas under a concrete slab, and that the barbeque grill will have to run off propane, rather than piped-in natural gas. Let me digress for a moment. Dad called me the other day. Since we're installing a fine new barbeque island, I told him he could have my old propane grill. I took it down to Tucson for him several weeks ago. I hadn't used it in a while, but the last time I used it, it worked fine. On Sunday, Dad called to ask why the burners weren't getting very hot. I said maybe the propane was low, or that in transporting it down to him, the lava rocks shifted and covered the burners. He checked it again and noticed the flame was out. The tank was empty. Now it's inside to the George Foreman Grill with half-cooked hamburgers to finish the job. Then detach the propane cylinder and schlep it across town to get it refilled. This has happened to me before. I don't like it when this happens. I want natural gas. Mark says the gas line was run through a PVC tube, over which the slab will be poured. If the gas line ever ruptures, it will vent through the PVC tube, rather than forming an explosive pocket of gas under the slab. No problem, at least to right-thinking Americans. Not so for Don. "No gas under the slab." He also didn't like the fact that several of the A/C ducts were not fully hooked up. He didn't like the stairway. Headroom problem. He didn't like the fact that Sonny had covered the joint where the barbeque island drain hooks into the sewer line. He is requiring that it be dug out so he can look at the pipes. This is the same guy that required Bob to write a letter about the rebar and grout months ago. I wonder if he can look at my photo and approve the plumbing, based on my website!?! Mark sent Leisa and me to Phoenix Brick to pick out paving brick last week. He gave us a concrete color chart so we can pick a concrete color that matches the pavers. He wanted to pour concrete on Monday. The red tag halted that, though. Mark had hoped to pass the concrete inspection on Tuesday so he could pour on Wednesday. Wrong. In fact, the inspector told him that if he called him out again and the site wasn't ready, Mark would be fined $120! I'm hoping this won't qualify as an extra. Mark sent Chris and Ernie home. He checked the Uniform Plumbing Code, which states that gas pipe can be run under a slab. He's called Don's boss. Stay tuned. |
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| We went shopping this weekend. One of the things we got was
a cute little step stool for Brittany so she won't climb on the
countertops when she's getting stuff out of the cabinets.
We also bought a sink for the barbeque island, before we found out that Don sucks. We also bought a dresser at Costco. And a TV stand at Target. We're hemorrhaging money. I'm just filling up space because nothing was happening at the house. |
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Things are progressing again, so we can indulge in a little
backstory for a moment.
Mark has had problems with Don on other jobs. On the job Mark finished immediately before ours began, Don came out to inspect. There was a garage addition, a new bathroom, extensive work on the patio, and a kitchen remodel. Don looked at everything but the kitchen. He refused to look at that. He said it wasn't on the building permit. Ummm, the building permit is issued by the City, based on the plans that were submitted to them. The remodel appears on the plans. It was the City's fault that the kitchen didn't show on the permit. The plans should control. They didn't. A revised permit was required. Mark called Don's supervisor a lot on that job. He's doing the same on ours. The supervisor came out and looked at the plumbing for the barbeque island. He said that as long as the island wasn't covered, the gas pipe was fine. The pouring of concrete began immediately. |
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 These are the Conditional Approvals that allowed Mark to pour concrete. |
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Here's Chris, working on the other end of the patio. |
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Here I am on Thursday, standing on the finished product. The
concrete is exposed aggregate, colored mocha. As you might guess, both of
those qualities are extras! It's much nicer than standard gray concrete,
though, and we thought it was worth it.
Mark suggests that we really bring out the color by acid washing this and sealing it. |
  On Friday, I had a surveyor come out to identify the property lines. As much grief as the city gave Roberta over her carport, I wanted to make darn sure there was no issue over our carport or block fence. This is the northeast corner of the lot. You can see Leisa in the background, stressing about the contents of the shed. That's a WPA stamp in the concrete. The sidewalk was poured in 1935. |
This is the northwest corner of the property, between our house and Georgia's. Look who else's carport is right on the property line. Time for me to complain to the city! Or maybe I already have... |
 This is the southeast corner of the property. Roberta's white fencepost sits exactly on the property line, so the stake was placed one foot to the west. You can also see the cute pink toenail polish on Leisa's toes, as she points down the property line. |
 This is the southwest corner of the property. Again, the fencepost is located exactly on the corner of the property, so the stake is exactly one foot to the east of the corner point. And there's the buried electrical line at the lower left. That was a $700 extra. |
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Since I've got the property lines displayed here, let me just take a minute to talk about land surveyors. I used a guy named Jerry Wier. I have his card, but Leisa has put it somewhere. As soon as I find it, I'll post his number here. I sat down with the Yellow Pages on Wednesday and started calling surveyors. I called about ten in all, including one that Mark recommended some time ago. Out of the ten that I called, I spoke to three surveyors total. The other seven never called back. The first guy I spoke to told me a survey would run between six and seven hundred dollars, "depending." I asked for a clarification of the word "depending," but he just said "based on what he found in researching the records." Okay. The next guy I talked to wanted a flat eight hundred bucks. Next. I liked Jerry from the time he answered the phone. The number in the phone book was his cell and he answered and gave me a firm price right then. He wanted to know if I needed it today! Talk about prompt. I told him Friday would be good, and he called back Friday around noon to say he was on his way. An hour and a half later, I was four hundred bucks poorer, but I knew where the property lines were. I'm in the wrong business. One of the things that we found was that the worthless shed sits exactly on the property line, as does Georgia's garage. |
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| Mark had hoped that by the end of the week,
work would have begun on the drywall. Not. They were too busy working on
Don's list.
Just in case you can't read it, here's what Don didn't like: Then he ran out of room. There would be more the following week. And just in case you can't read it on the red tag, it says there will be a $120 fine if it's not ready the next time Mark calls for an inspection. Yikes! I hope that's not passed on to us as an extra. Some of this seems incredibly nitpicky, such as the stapling of conductors. If you have an electrical box nailed to a stud, the wire is to be stapled to the stud within eight inches of the box. Don must have had his tape out, because some of them were nine or ten inches from the box.
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Leisa's house went on the market on Friday. We had three people come by and look at it on the first day. We had several more on Saturday. Little Brittany, who's so cute in her pajamas, standing on the stool, above, proved absolutely worthless as a spy. One couple came by on Saturday afternoon, went to look at the house down the street, then came back to look at Leisa's house. Brittany said they were talking about the two houses. I asked what they said. "I don't know," she replied. "I was watching a movie." Grrrrr. I want to know what they're saying about the house. And the house down the street used to be occupied by Tammy, the Girl Scout Troop Leader, until she decided she was going to bolt on her one-year lease after only six weeks. It's now up for sale, for a whopping $30,000 more than the amount for which Leisa's house was listed. That promptly reinforced Leisa's belief that her house was listed way too low, and that she should get ten or fifteen thousand more out of it. This is a frequent topic of discussion. On Sunday, Leisa and I went to the Phoenix Home and Garden show. We parked at the house and walked to the fairgrounds. On our way out, Roberta was pulling in and we stopped to talk with her. I asked her why she took her carport down and she told me the City made her do it. She said they had a complaint. She said she thought I complained, so when they suggested that she talk with me, she didn't. She just pulled it down. I told her that I absolutely did not complain, and described my original letter to Lingner, which focused solely on cats. She wasn't happy to hear about my request that the City limit the number of cats someone can keep. She told me that someone complained about Georgia's house, too. They complained about the inoperable vehicle, as well as a bunch of weeds in the yard. We told Roberta that someone had also complained about our yard. That it had weeds and debris in it. Leisa said that we thought it was Roberta complaining, since we'd complained about the cats. Roberta assured us that it wasn't she who complained. We wandered off to the home show, and as I was wandering around, the thought struck me that one person stood to benefit from all the complaining: Oscar, the unemployed tile-setter across the street. He's done a bunch of handiwork for both Roberta and Georgia, as well as other people on the street. He's painted Roberta's porch and house. He painted the Mr. Folk's house, next door to Roberta. When I complained about the cats, Oscar and his daughter cleaned it up. She has a continuing gig, cleaning out the cat pen. When the carport came down, Oscar took it down. When the weeds in Georgia's backyard needed chopping, Oscar did it. He had approached me about trimming the palm tree in the front yard. The same tree that's dropping the fronds that could be considered "debris." Means. Motive. Opportunity. I've watched a lot of Perry Mason. These are the three elements of a crime. I had originally thought it was a building inspector, being a jerk. But now there's a financial motive, and my suspicions have shifted. |
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