Thank Goodness for Sunshine

Today couldn't be a more gorgeous 65 degree sunshiny day!  Thank you mother nature. 

Via

After barely surviving the sauna that is the state of Florida this past weekend, I am loving these early September days in Virginia.  This was actually my facebook post after getting home from the airport on Monday night (much to the dismay of my fb friends), "I have to say after a wonderful trip to Florida, I am happy to be back in the much cooler state of Virginia-never thought I would say those words..."

Sadly though, I am not enjoying these days on the back porch of my house.  Even though yesterday was "move-in day" we are still going to be out for at least another week and up to a month.  I am so frustrated with the horrendous contractors that our homeowners association selected to "manage" our renovation.  When checking in on the progress on Tuesday evening (because to know if anything happened I have to go physically see it-God forbid someone give me a schedule, plan, or communicate what is happening) I noticed that the flooring under the carpet in the living room is uneven and actually trip worthy. 

Yes I did say carpet, what happened to the hardwoods?  Well, these crazy subcontractors are only out to make a buck and wanted to charge us 3x more than what any other flooring company would to install (on top of what the insurance company was already paying them to put in a hardwood foyer and carpet on the rest of the first floor). 

So after the initial outrage, we decided these people are hacks anyway (ie put all the wrong tile in all the wrong bathrooms) and we would be better off just having them put carpet in and getting it replaced with hardwoods a year or two down the road with better contractors and a lower price.

Little did we know at the time that they wouldn't level the sub floor before laying carpet, don't know if they put any padding down first, but from the feel of it they may have decided to scatter rocks around before laying the carpet.  Oh yes and the TV cables that we wanted layed under the carpet piled in a corner, that was a nice sight to see.

This isn't event the reason that we are going to be delayed moving in.  We have these HUGE mounted mirrors in all of our bathrooms.  Well, the mirror hits the wall 29.5" from the floor.  The cabinets I selected hit at 31-35.5".  Not a problem I thought since the contractors are billing $100 in each bathroom to take down and rehang the mirrors.  Our project manager called to say on Tuesday morning that the cabinets I picked wouldn't work and that we were going to have to have custom cabinets made because the mirror hangs too low.  Hello-I told you what cabinets I wanted and the specs a few weeks ago-could you have done the math then and not the day before we have the movers scheduled to bring our furniture back in?  Plus you are supposed to take the mirrors down anyway.  He said he didn't want to do that because they are glued to the wall. 

Well, I came up with the brilliant plan that it would be much faster to knock down the wall with the mirror, rehang drywall, paint and put up a new mirror than to wait 3-4 weeks for custom cabinets to be made.  My project manager didn't agree, but my homeowners association rep did think that would work and is trying to figure that out with the insurance company today.

We will see who wins this battle-later today.