Communication Is Key

About a week into demo, the front yard is still overgrown. It is also soaked from more than six inches of rain.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2016-04-18.

I walked the Ash House with our partner Larry and one of Larry’s favorite GCs this afternoon. We had more than six inches of rain yesterday, so the yard was really wet. Unfortunately, the rain prevented us from getting started reroofing the house, which made a couple of leaks very apparent.

The meeting was to make sure all three of us are on the same page with regard to redeveloping the house. The contractor thought a couple of our ideas were a little extravagant, so he removed them from the original bid. We had to be firm that we really do want to open the kitchen up to the dining room and bring all electrical to current code. So please make sure there is money in the bid to cover it.

The GC has also found a couple of problems while demoing the bathrooms and kitchen. You never know what you will find when you open a wall. In this case, we found more work to do and more money to spend. But we will not sell a house we can’t be proud of. So our margins just got a little thinner. Here’s hoping they don’t disappear completely.