Once again, the week has been dominated by the build. Lisa’s work in sourcing all the bits and pieces needed for the house from the Internet is coming to a head – boxes and more boxes arriving at the rental house. The sitting room is rapidly turning into a builders merchant with door handles, lamp shades, tiles, thermostats and all sorts of other things – next week it will be a pallet or two of fans and lots of taps and even a sink or two.
Since it is a holiday weekend (Monday is Memorial Day) and my birthday is on Tuesday, we declared Saturday a fun day and went off to get a bit of mountain air. We drove up to Hiawassee and visited Hightower Creek Vineyard – it’s probably the highest vineyard in Georgia. We sat on the outside deck with a glass of cold white wine and listened to the live music. Then we went on to a nursery garden down the road called English Country Gardens – it’s run by a professional horticulturalist originally from Hertfordshire and is one of the few Georgia suppliers of proper English roses from David Austin (gardeners amongst my readership will know how important that is!). I can see Lisa spending a few pennies there in the autumn Finally, as we wound around the mountains driving home we decided to go out for dinner – we went to the Oar House down the road (where the quality of the live entertainment was distinctly inferior to Hightower Creek – a singer channelling Bob Marley and Cat Stevens and not doing a very good job of either).
On the Build Site
The Brick Saga
The brick supply problem is becoming a real worry and annoyance, especially as it feels totally out of our control. To recap, if you haven’t been following the story to date:
We bought nearly 50 pallets of reclaimed brick at a knockdown price from Lisa’s cousin (who is also providing the reclaimed timber floors). His mill in Locust Grove is about 100 miles south, the far side of Atlanta. The bricks are very heavy and a flatbed truck can carry a max of 16 pallets of them before it gets into trouble at the weighbridges en route. The first delivery came six weeks ago. But the driver took a silly route, winding through the mountains – we assume he reported back to his dispatcher that this was the delivery to Hell. So the freight company started finding all sorts of reasons why they couldn’t deliver the remainder. The situation is exacerbated by a serious shortage of heavy freight capacity in Atlanta as the economy has rapidly picked up this year. One big carrier has 100 heavy trucks and a backlog of 8,000 deliveries. We even had TJ, one of our contractors, go down towing a trailer behind his macho pickup truck and he could manage 3 pallets for us on one trip.
There are other complications. The delivery trucks have to be unloaded and we are dependent upon TJ who has a large bobcat with a forklift capacity – but he needs the bobcat for other jobs, and so there is scheduling issues for offloading.
Lisa has been getting more and more frustrated trying to find a carrier who can moves these bricks for us, as have the relatives in Locust Grove. However, we thought we had a solution on Thursday – Zack (cousin) confirmed that he had managed to get a flatbed from Fedex Freight (dismiss images of each brick individually wrapped in bubblewrap in a cardboard box with a barcode – Fedex also have a fleet of big lorries). Fedex were due to load at his mill on Thursday afternoon and deliver to site midmorning Friday. Thursday afternoon passed, and no truck to be loaded. Then it was 7:30am loading, delivery midday. Then it drifted to maybe noon load, delivery late on Friday (and it would be really late on Friday – this is Memorial Day weekend and the truck would have to drive through the centre of Atlanta during rush hour competing with the entire population of the city on the road to the lake/beach/relatives – arrival at site after dark seemed likely).
Apparently there had been a crane accident at the Fedex depot on Thursday including some injuries. So the entire loading process for all their trucks stopped and everything got thrown into confusion. Finally, we had to stop hoping for Friday and pushed the delivery out until after the weekend (and no promises from Fedex). The timing of the delivery is now maybe Tuesday or Wednesday and we are working with TJ to schedule the unloading. SCREAM ! ! ! ! ! ! !!!!!
So, why does this matter so much? We are at the stage with lots of different tradesmen doing interlocking jobs, and we certainly don’t want them disappearing for weeks with jobs half done because a preceding job has stalled. The bricks outside the house can wait for a while as the critical bit at this time was the front porch floor (which ties in with pillars supporting the porch supports and the framing crew) now completed using up the entire remaining brick stock. More critically the fireplaces, which are a combination of brick and stone with reclaimed timber mantelpieces. No chimneypieces delays the built-in cabinets. A part-job on the cabinetry installation will cost more, and might delay other cabinetry like the fitted kitchen. Which could delay getting the worktops ordered. More seriously, it could also delay electrical and other services fitting. And electrical delays could delay wiring into the mains and thus water supplies (electric pump needed from the well). And no water could delay the septic tank completion and god knows what else.
So, what was achieved this week?
A remarkable amount in spite of the time and effort put into bricks. As mentioned above, the front porch is pretty nearly complete, just needing a bit of brickwork. Since we now have porch floors at the back of the house, permanent supporting posts for the upper decks have been installed. Milan and his crew are working on building the decks using ipe wood – a very durable South American hardwood (yes, it has all sorts of green credentials, we are not destroying the Amazon rainforest) which should be good for 20 years service. Cabinetry for downstairs (kitchen, wine room, Lisa’s workroom, etc. has been delivered and installed – it looks great. And the roll-down cedar garage doors have been installed (though without mains power we can’t use them yet). The interior doors have all arrived and Tom is staring to hang these and secure the house from intruders. The sooner the better, I say, so that we can evict unwanted visitors (large size bear tracks in the mud outside and raccoon tracks on the dusty floor of my wine cellar spotted this week). By Tuesday we should be able to shut the house securely with lockable doors and windows on all openings.