What a difference the right contractor makes. They arrived just a couple hours ago and are already halfway down the checklist of things we needed. Not everything will be completed today – we still need to select and order the security screen door we want installed – but there is no big rush on that anyway. More important was getting the shed fixed (that’s done already) and the handrail\/steps to the deck rebuilt (they are working on that now). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My wife had been concerned about the steps for a while, but I always dismissed it as a case of over-worrying. In this case she was absolutely correct – the steps themselves were fine, but the way they were attached to the deck was absolutely not. They were apparently affixed with just a handful of screws to a board that was almost completely rotted out. When showing me the damage, the apprentice picked up a piece they had removed and crushed it with his fingers. I doubt it would have lasted the summer, and frankly, I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We bought the house from a company that had scooped it up in foreclosure, slapped a coat of paint on things, and called it a day. Hell, there were even dead chicken corpses left in the old coop that we had to stipulate would be cleaned up in our purchase agreement. Our inspector (and first lesson learned) missed a ton of things, one of which being that the chimney for the wood stove was held together by tape – we discovered that when the tape melted and our upper floor was flooded with smoke. We had that repaired, but since then, any whiff of smoke and we’re checking everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve been thinking about putting together a document or site that lists the quality companies that we’ve worked with (and perhaps a list of warnings and lessons learned) for new residents – maybe I’ll combine that with the local town only social media network site I have been thinking about… but then I have so many project ideas going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Song of the day: Holy Smoke<\/a> by Iron Maiden<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a difference the right contractor makes. They arrived just a couple hours ago and are already halfway down the checklist of things we needed. Not everything will be completed today – we still need to select and order the security screen door we want installed – but there is no big rush on that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t