The repairs to our home's drywall, closing panels removed by ServiceMaster to dry out the insulation after our little flood encounter last November, are proceeding apace. The new drywall is in place and "mudded", and the team will be back today to re-mud (is that even a thing?), sand the edges smooth, and prepare the walls for painting. That'll happen either this afternoon or (more likely) tomorrow, whereupon the ServiceMaster repair team will step back for a week or so to allow our new floor to be laid. When that's done, the final step will be to install baseboard over the flooring and tidy up any last bits and pieces.
It's taken a lot longer than I anticipated to get everything organized. Just finding a contractor was hard enough; most wanted three to four times more than ServiceMaster is charging, and would only undertake to fit us in around other, larger jobs. Very frustrating, that. At any rate, we finally got things scheduled, only for both my wife and myself to come down with this year's crud (which, as I've observed earlier, is the worst annual crud I've encountered since coming to this country for the first time in 1996). Even now, after almost six weeks fighting it, neither of us is yet fully recovered, and don't expect to be for some weeks yet. Needless to say, we didn't want to be yet another plague vector for our poor contractors, so we had to delay proceedings until we were no longer infectious.
Now to find out whether the flooring wholesalers kept their promise and delivered our flooring as promised. The previous lot didn't - it seems making promises and keeping them are distinctly variable propositions, explained away by the catch-all "supply chain issues". They've gotten so bad that a couple of local contractors have actually shelved plans to build new housing developments, because they can't be sure of getting the parts, appliances and bits and pieces they need, when and where they need them. It's bad enough for us, with a few thousand dollars in repairs, so when developments in the seven-figure range are impacted, I have a great deal of sympathy for the businessmen involved.
Oh, well . . . onward!
Peter
I work for an architect and yes, building materials orders can become troublesome when decisions aren't made quickly. Many contractors will hold their bid price for 30 days, due to volatility of market. One of our contractors who specialize in apartment buildings actually order materials for the NEXT job they haven't begun, hoping that they beat price increase and already having in hand. But then they have to store it somewhere and that that become expensive. Also, labor market is difficult as keeping workers on the job can be a challenge.
ReplyDeleteI hope your contractor does a good job.
Friend of mine over in Dallas is STILL waiting for his replacement house to be built now going on 2 years due to 'supply chain' issues...
ReplyDeleteJust in time was always a fantasy but it survived right up until most of the suppliers were driven to the wall in one way or another. The idiots in Congress didn't help by declaring all end of year inventory was fully taxable which led EVERYBODY to cut inventory.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had a small online store, my motto was "If it's in Stock, We Have It!"
ReplyDelete