Home Again, Home Again?

(This was me, seeing the new space for the first time 4 months ago. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to be home. I still can't.)

I'm sorry it's been a while.

As you can imagine, there has been a lot going on in my world, what with coming home and getting back to the daily schedule. And I'm not quite there yet.

Trigger warning: anyone who has been through a disastrous renovation, this might be re-traumatizing content.

There was a lot of work on the house being done while I was gone for most of 2018. Before cancer happened, I has scheduled the construction of a camelback to expand my living space from the 600 sq. feet I've been living in for the past 5 years. When cancer happened, I thought I didn't want to lose the time, and wouldn't it be perfect if they could do the work while I was gone and I could come home to a new, improved space. I'd already taken loans out on the house, and I didn't want to inadvertently spend home equity money on medical bills--I wanted it to build more equity and value in the house--so I decided to go ahead with the project. I found a couple of guys through a common friend and they were fantastic. Small business, starting out again after coming back to the area. They were excited. We all were facebook friends. The project was scheduled to be done certainly before I got back in October.

(New addition. )

The weekend after I finished radiation, I came home to visit for a dear friend's wedding, and was so excited to see the new space framed out--how big and beautiful it was. But it seemed still a long way away from being done, and I was three weeks from being back for good. I spoke to my contractors and they said not to worry, that it would just be a couple of weeks.

I was given a completion date, and told my contractors that just before then, my friends would be coming to help move my stuff back over from the rental side to my side of the house (it's a shotgun that I live in while renting out the other side). My friends put out the call and gathered people together, and when they showed up, the place was a disaster: no windows and a partial roof, and construction materials strewn everywhere. Fair to say, it was where it should have been in July, not October. So they sent everyone home and said they'd be calling them once again when things were ready to move for real.

Thankfully, my friend MJ is one of the most generous and understanding people in the world, and has a lovely home in Gretna with an art studio/guest room, and she offered that I stay there until my house was done. For this kindness, I will never cease to be grateful.

My Scottish friend Emma flew over to Boston, and after a quick 36-hour tour of New England autumn, I had my last Herceptin infusion at Mass General and I headed back to my parents' house to pack up my belongings and get ready to come home.

(Emma doesn't know I took this during our New England fall tour. Don't tell her. )

I spent two days going through things and deciding which I would need, and which would be shipped in about a month, once I was back in my house and ready for winter clothing and the furniture they're sending from my grandmother's house. I brought the minimum that I could--just enough to get through a few weeks of work and moving until I was back home.

Upon returning, my first visit to the house was disappointing. Nothing had happened since I was there for the wedding 3 weeks prior. Literally nothing. Like I looked at pictures and there were tools that were still in the same place. There were no windows, no real walls--just plywood sheeting around a rough structure. There was no insulation. The roof was partially done but also partially tarped down in some places. I contacted the guys, who said something about a delay and it would be a couple of weeks, still. I spoke with MJ, who again said I could stay as long as I needed to. Emma stayed on MJ's couch for as long as she was here and then left again back to Scotland, expecting that I'd be moving back into my house in a few weeks. Because they keep saying two weeks.

Since then it's been a series of two weeks, and two weeks, and two weeks, and now it's 3 months later and I'm still not home. On December 1st, I was told that there were a lot of unforeseen costs and a lot of work subbed out, and that they'd blown through all the money I'd given them--which was all my money for the project--and that they were out of cash. It would be another $8K on supplies that I'd need to find in order to finish the project. I knew that this was a breach of our contract, but I also knew that I didn't have any more money to pay someone else to do the work and essentially pay double for anything that hadn't yet finished. I pulled out a credit card that I'd paid off a long time ago but had kept open, renegotiated the rate down a bit, and arranged that they'd keep working and I'd pay for supplies directly. They had a month to finish, and they said this was doable. In the following weeks, I saw that they only showed up at the house about 6-8 times. Not over Xmas long weekends. Not in the weeks in-between, save for a few days. When they show up, I can see visible progress, but they're just not showing up.

(How it was in October)

I had a hard move-in date the first week of January. I had a friend coming to help me move in. I'd booked movers to help move my furniture. I showed up on New Year's Day to another disaster, and was told by one of them that there was at least 9 days of work left before I would be able to move my things in, let alone the inspections, and he seemed perplexed when I asked about the Friday deadline. He had been confused as to why a friend and I spent 2 days grid-stacking a metric ton of bamboo flooring to make sure it had time to acclimate before they installed it. We did this because it needed 5 days to acclimate and they had to be done by Friday, which was just 5 days. By the look on his face, it was as though he hadn't been told about the Friday deadline at all.

(How it was 2 weeks ago.)

So there we were, staring down yet another blown deadline. We had another painful come-to-Jesus conversation where I gave them yet another two weeks. Told my friend to move her trip back for the 3rd time. It's now been 12 days since then. I can't get them to call me back. They've been there one, maybe one and a half days since we had that conversation. I texted them to ask for timeframes and how much more materials they needed to buy to finish, as I've already spent $8K since the last "we're out of money" conversation. They gave me another $8K figure, which I said was unacceptable. They never gave me a timeframe. It's all I've been asking for.

Last weekend, I got a stair rail and newel off of Cragislist, as that was a big part of the expected expenditures, and the man who brought it to me took one look at the place and said it was months away from being done. He was also incredibly generous, not only giving me the stair rails for no cost after hearing my story, but also giving me tips on how to install the bamboo flooring if it came down to me having to do that, and offering me doors and supplies that he has from his own renovation business. Seriously, this guy was a saint, and we're keeping in touch. But him telling me that my house was another 2 months from completion just broke me.

It's yet another week later, and after hearing from the guys that they had to take this week off of my house to do other jobs to pay their bills, I'm now waiting, yet again, for a promised phone call. I asked for a realistic move-in date. I haven't been able to get one. I am told there's one more day of work they need to do before the initial inspection, before they can start to put up the drywall and begin the final push. I still need all the drywall upstairs installed, texturized & painted. all the ceilings installed & painted in both sides downstairs, all electrical fixtures (lights, fans, outlets, etc) installed throughout, and the entire upstairs bathroom built out. Then I need exterior siding installed upstairs, all the soffits built out, and a way for them to tie in the new addition with the existing structure. And I need to have a mini-split unit installed for heating and cooling, as the only climate control I have downstairs are window units and an open-flame gas wall heater in the front room. I have a guy for that, but he's waiting until these guys are ready for him.

I am once again held hostage by their lack of communication. I'm getting new quotes by new contractors that I would have to put on credit cards, just to be able to get back in my house. If it weren't for the boundless generosity of MJ, opening her house to me for all of these unexpected months , I simply don't know what I would have done. My friends really are the best friends.

Once of the complicating factors is that I was planning to have my things shipped to me in a matter of weeks, including my cold weather clothing and more than a week's worth of outfits. I still don't have those things. Any of the clothes I left in New Orleans during treatment are in my rental unit in boxes stacked 8 feet high. Anything I didn't pack in the car to drive back down is at my parents' house. So I've been gathering warm clothes along the way as things went on sale at Old Navy, and wearing the same 5 pairs of pants and about 7 shirts in rotation since October. I had a formal party to go to over Xmas and I had to borrow clothes. All of my things are in messy little piles around MJ's art room, and I feel terrible that I have taken over her space and continue to live in such disarray in there, but there's nowhere to put my things and I still need them to live my daily life while I continue working full time, and managing the house, and continuing my treatment, and getting Herceptin infusions (chemo-lite) once every three weeks.

I hate living out of boxes and suitcases. I did it after Katrina when I came home too early at was at the mercy of another friend, and now I'm doing it again, 13 years later. When I bought the house, I told myself at least I'd never have to live out of boxes again. I'd never have to feel like I'm camping. And yet here I am, once again, camping.

(The rental unit--no ceilings, boxes in the front room 8 feet high, and a stack of mattresses getting filthy, one of which is the awesome mattress that I should be sleeping on, in my home. It's so wet in there that the boxes are beginning to collapse. So this is a mess.)

You know, I understand now that these guys were in over their heads and that this was the risk I took in hiring a small company consisting of basically two guys. But their estimate I could afford, and the big companies I couldn't. Turns out, they just told me what I wanted to hear, and I'm paying more than I would have if I'd gone with a large company. And I'd have been home by now.

And I understand that they've not been getting paid for this since they blew through all of my money, and that's as far back as October. I understand that they need to work to pay their bills. But they said they'd give me all of December and have it done as long as they got their supplies, and I made it happen for them that they had all the supplies, but they just didn't show up. So December came & went and no measurable progress was made. And I get it--family things happen. Life happens. Bills happen. But I am working full time throughout this whole thing. I have to show up every morning to my job 5 days a week. They're at the point where they barely show up once a week, if that. It's now been 10 days since they were at the house last. I've been there three times. And they are working on being 30% over budget, not because of things they found once they started, but because they subbed out too much work and let costs get away from them, and didn't know it was happening until all my money was gone. This wasn't unforeseen damage that they had to adapt to. This is straight up job mismanagement.

I don't know what else to say other than I wish I could enter some kind of sweepstakes wherein someone comes in and renovates your house in a week and you move back home to a fresh, clean slate. Don't that do those anymore? Extreme Home Makeover? Someone come and tell me to move that bus already.

But until the fantasy happens, I'll be here, plugging along, trying to find solutions and put out some fires and light other ones. Thankfully I'm really good at finding solutions. I just need someone else to meet me halfway, so I can get back home again.