Where Have All the Roofers Gone?
We've been expecting the roofers to arrive any time now for a few weeks. They have shown up a couple of times, but something is keeping them from being able stay and to work on our house, which is kind of annoying because it has been raining quite a bit. As a bonus, the water company is tearing up the entire street to re-lay the sewer line, which just adds to the excitement on site.
Work inside is progressing little by little, and most of the exterior trim is on the house now. But this is a very slow time of the year for contractors. A lot of their guys take most of the month of December off, which seems like a dream (except for working like a dog all summer to earn that vacation). So everything is moving very slowly.
The other thing holding us up is the sprinklers. The city asked for a pressure test of the water line before issuing the permit. EBMUD (our local water company) will do this test for free, but it takes 22 days to schedule it. We asked the city to issue the permit and require the pressure test to final it (which is how it works in pretty much every other city), but because Alameda is Alameda they had to be a pain about it. Until the permit is issued, we can't have an inspection of the work, which means we can't close up any walls inside (which we also can't do because the roof is not on, fair enough).
I've mostly been to the house in the dark lately, with the winter light and my work schedule. So somehow I hadn't noticed this thing, which I assume is part of the sprinklers. I like that nice big dial there. All it needs is a big screw knob and a few dozen more pipe turns and we can have a little steampunk installation.
One of the things the guys have been working on is the side porch. These are the little half-height walls like what was originally there (not since we've lived here, but you can see the marks from the original in the paint). They will be trimmed out like the front porch, and to get the code-mandated height we will add a metal decorative railing above.
One of my many tasks is setting up some time to interview the metalworker to make some of these railings and so forth. I have a name and number and an interested person and it's just a matter of making the call. I have a sort of fantasy about work slowing down in December to allow me to get more of these things done. Stop laughing.
Tomorrow I meet the contractor on site to talk about the back staircase railing. These meetings are tedious and long and always end up with a long list of things to resolve, but they have to get done.
posted by ayse on 11/30/16