Another deadline missed and an inside job burglary. Breaking point #659

Last I recapped was early August when I thought things were starting to move full steam ahead. WRONG. 

My window installer from Palm Beach spent the last 3 weeks of the month and an extra week (4 weeks total for you math wizards out there) arguing with the inspector over “Florida Building Code” failing to swallow his pride and understand that Miami-Dade county has their own set of codes that also must be followed. For those who need the technicality here it is: Dade county does not allow double bucks. The bucking between the concrete block and the window must be one solid piece. Have a 3 inch gap? You gotta rip down a 4x4 and cannot sandwich together two 2x4s. Easy enough but we lost 4 weeks having a pissing contest, only for the inspector to win- DUH!

Now that that’s done… time for insulation. Another scheduling nightmare of things getting done BEFORE they were supposed to. So we tore some stuff down for the inspection but they we couldn’t get the crew back out to finish 2 walls of missing insulation!!! 

Sept 16- wedding festivities begin. Time to head down to the keys to “relax” and enjoy the weekend with my soon to be wife. Regrettably I took calls Thursday and Friday trying to leave things in place for my dad who was stepping in as we left on our honeymoon. These calls were just more false promises and by Saturday (wedding day) I was telling subs who were calling to fuck off since they were all aware of THE DAY. 

September 19- October 4: HONEYMOON right? Eh. Albeit my dad took most of the workload off he used me to be “daddy/bad cop”. When I crew didn’t respond, was a no show or tried to increase the agreed upon price, my dad would let me know. Of course I couldn’t sit idle. So there I found myself in Nairobi having chicken wings for dinner after traveling and taking 2 Covid PCR test in 24 hours calling the Drywall sub to have a little chat… and the next morning in the beautiful hills of Masi Mara dealing with the dirt bag stucco guy… in summary… no work was physically done while we were gone. 

October 9- Daddy’s back and caught up with work bitches, time to turn my sights back to the house. Drywall begins. 

October 12- garage door in. House is “secure”. 

October 16- stucco begins

October 22- exterior of the house is primed

October 28- 2 weeks after drywall hangers compelered their work the finish crew finally shows up. Just another delay and missed promises. 

Nov 1- roof tiles get loaded. Whale Roofing taking care of business and on time as usual. You can count on those guys. 

Nov 4- drywall crew finishes and load up their stuff. I go to inspect. WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY APPLIANCES?!?!? panic. Maybe the moved them to finish the garage. Check house. Maybe I missed them. Check house again. WTF! Check doors- front door unlocked, garage overhead door unlocked. More panic. Call wife “I think we’ve been robbed get over here”. Call cops. Scour neighborhood for video footage. Whole damn neighborhood is under construction and no one has cameras up. Anger. Call drywall contractor, get bullshit response. Receive video from neighbors of 2 people trying to enter their construction site at 1 AM. Drywall contractor calls me back “oh he swears he locked up”. Obvious lie. INSIDE JOB. NO FORCED ENTRY. TOOK THEIR SWEET TIME MOVING AND STACKING TILE. Lady Justice will find you.

Nov 5- All new appliances have been ordered and won’t arrive for several weeks with the fridge taking an extra few weeks. Sweeeeet dude. $10k lost, no insurance to cover loss. 

Nov 8- interior doors delivered after 16 weeks. Still missing the door to the garage. No ETA on that one… 6 PM Dad and I start to hang doors cuz I’m poor and out of money and my dad would do a better job than anyone I hired anyways. 2 doors in, 8 more to go. 

Tile starts Wednesday so we have another night or maybe 2 to get all the doors in. We (Chaz, dad and I) are planning to install kitchen cabinet lowers Sunday. Fell asleep at 10 PM woke up at 1 am. The next month is going to be hell, I can feel it already. But seeing how happy Aly got when she put the floor tile next to a painted sample, it keeps me going. 

Send a prayer our way. I need it to see the end of this project.