Sorry to seem a bit morbid this week, but it has suddenly been an upsetting one. The first bad news came from Zack and Brandy (Lisa’s cousin) who are providing the bricks and flooring for our house. Zack’s father died suddenly during Sunday night. Understandably, our bricks and floors take a lower priority to this. Next, the brother-in-law of Bill the Builder also suddenly passed away whilst out fishing one morning, so again, a downgrading of priorities is right and inevitable. Finally, the head of the local Master Gardner’s group in Dahlonega, who lives only two houses away from our rental home, died from cancer. Lisa has been study to become a Master Gardener most of this year, and was expecting to go the house in order to help tidy up the garden next week.
To add to all this upset, it seems certain that Charles won’t be coming to see us next week. He was scheduled to arrive on 16th, on the way back to UK after a holiday with his son Tom in Peru. On Wednesday evening we had an email from him. He was on a trek to Machu Picchu, and decided to take one day by horseback as he was finding the climb a bit of a strain (he’s retired and has had one heart operation already so no surprise there). The horse threw him. He landed on rocks, just missed dashing his brains out but broke no less than 6 ribs. It was a major struggle to get him down the mountain and his insurance company won’t let him travel until it is medically safe. Whilst all his friends are concerned and sympathetic, there is a tinge of “what do you expect if…”. He has now been in hospital for a week, with no news of an imminent release.
On Saturday, we were in Atlanta for a wedding (Karen’s son Adam). No way that we were going to drive down from Dahlonega to be ready for the ceremony in the middle of a park at 8:30am. We stayed in a nearby hotel (using up some of the points we had built up on our travels last year). Fortunately the threatened thunderstorms did not materialise, and all went off well. People drifted away by late morning, and we went to spend Saturday night with Karen and Dieter. On Sunday we drove home to face all the building issues, stopping en route for some upmarket grocery shopping at Harry’s Farmers Market (= Wholefoods).
On the Build site
Things have been busy inside and outside this week, which was encouraging. Alfonso and his brother have been busy bricklaying and have also built a retaining wall to protect the lower ground floor from water runoff. Inside the house, the sheet rock crew have had the run of the place ensuring that all the joints are sealed and sanded smooth. Apart from a few small snagging items, that is now all finished and we can move on with interior work.
Now we (and Bill as chief organiser) face a host of new challenges. There are so many interlocking and interdependent jobs to be done, and it is a big challenge to schedule the different specialists. That’s definitely a job for Bill (and his understandable preoccupation over his brother in law is a bit of a distraction). We are doing the best we can to help by ensuring that we don’t create any delays over taking decisions. This week we have met with the tiler (all tiles already selected), had another session with the cabinet makers (and provided all the answers on door handles and the like), agreed a slightly superior heating control system (which we can control with an app on our mobile phones, and is promised to save lots of energy and money) with the HVAC specialist, started selecting paint for inside and out, the list goes on and on.
The big problem we are now facing is bricks. Alfonso was rapidly running out of reclaimed bricks. And no sign of any delivery of the remaining 16 thousand. The trucking company who brought the first load of bricks from Lisa’s cousin’s plant to the build site is now being extremely evasive about when (or even if) they will deliver the second and third load. Their drivers do not like winding mountain roads in their big trucks, and Monday’s delivery never happened. And we can’t use Lisa’s cousin to put extreme pressure on them because of the domestic tragedy which is occupying their time at present. Lisa has been looking all week for an alternative transport company, so far without success. So, imaginative planning was required. The outside of the house is supposed to be covered in a mixture of reclaimed bricks and stone. Since Alfonso is equally happy working in stone as in brick, we have brought forward the stone part of the job, got a delivery of 5 tons of rocks, and Alfonso has started on that until the great brick moving problem is resolved.