The Last Task?

Well, I certainly hope so. I know that there are some small jobs that we want to do, Laura wants to plant a few things, I have some art to hang, the garage and storage building both could use a re-do, but as far as the biggies the things that really hurt the ol' check book, I am pretty sure we are closing in on being done.

I mean, we don't need a roof, Dad did that. The house will need to be painted in the future, but that is the future. So that only left...

WINDOWS!

The livingroom windows haven't opened correctly in years. The one on the left hasn't opend at all in what, 10 years? More?

One window in the livingroom only opened for about a month after Dad and I moved in. Then some bone head decided one night that since the window was open it would be a grand idea to come in and see what he could steal. The problem with that idea was that both Dad and I were home in our rooms and we both heard him.

I came out with a bat, Dad with a .38 and this dumbass jumped back out the window, bending the shit out of it in the process. It was never the same. There was always a slight bit at the bottom of the window that wasn't closed. When it was cold out, it come in this gap. Never seemed to bother Dad very much, Bugged me a lot.

 

 

This Kitchen window opened alright but getting it closed again was sometimes quite a task. You see the builder simply took a normal single hung window and turned it on its side. Yeah, I know. But it was UDC, they were cheap bastards.

 

I'm sure you have noticed all of the lovely black mullions between all of these windows, single pane glass by the way. All of these tiny windows I can tell you from much expreience are a major pain in the back side to clean, I did it many times. There is no way in heaven or hell that you could get me up there to clean then them again however and Dad NEVER did it. Ever.

He did hire it out a few times but the last time the people that came said that they would have to charge extra because of all the little windows. They were never cleaned again.

This one window was our biggest concern. You can see that the original builder decided that the best way to execute this was to use two seperate windows stacked on top of each other. It saved them money you see.

All of the estimates we had received made a big deal about this one window. They didn't have a problem with the shape, it was the size that they took issue with. They all said that they would have to do it the same way, two windows. Then we found Energy Shield.

The guy saw it and said no worries. We make our own windows, no problem at all.

And as good as his word there it is! All one window! What's more all of our new windows are composite frame, dual pane, argon filled windows! And we learned something interesting from our new window friends; ALL other widows that are sold here are made someplace else and shipped here. Because of that they only fill the gap with 70% argon because shipping can cause the argon to expand and contract. (Outside air pressure) Since these windows were made in Casa Grande they are filled to 100%, supposed to give better power savings. We'll see. Last summers $200+ power bills were a tad much for me to fathom.

 

Wild isn't it?

And they open and close with one hand, touch of a button.

The one down side was when I paid for them, yikes! At least they aren't from Renwal by Anderson! Their quote for this job, 15 windows, was $75,000! I laughed really really hard!

Powerful

 So last week was a heavy hit in the checkbook.

We woke up on Monday and our power box and front walk looked like this:

But just after lunch time our electrician Francis shows up, because he wants to prep the site.

.

What you see here is the result of four hours fairly steady work by just Francis. (You had to know I didn't help him.) This was just to get ready to actually do the work we would be paying a lot of friggin' money for. I was surprised at how little sidewalk he took out. From the description he gave us with the estimate, we thought that the entire front walk would be coming out.

The next morning at a quarter of seven the real work began.

And really, that's not even the hard part. The hard part is feeding power lines through a new stand pipe and the extending and threading all of the wires for the house into the box. "What?" I hear you thinking real loud. Well, this...

To get to this point took the better part of the day. I noticed that the guys doing this work took no breaks, did not stop for lunch and never once asked to use the can. Supermen? Perhaps. But they did not stop here oh no. No they needed to populate the rails with breakers and make their connections. Really a one man job. So one worked, one watched and one left. They lamented his departure when it came time to collect up all of the broken concrete, but what can ya do?

Much more nicely done than the panel they replaced. Clearly these guys still know what it is to take pride in ones work. They even took the time to identify and properly label all of the breakers, something that the old panel could not be said to have had done to it.

When all was said and done they buttoned up the box around four o'clock in the afternoon, I hope that they both clocked out and went immediately to get something to eat!

So now, our front walk looks like this...

And we just need to find someone who can do 2 square yards of concrete with a salt finish for us sometime before the HOA begins screaming.

As for our new power box, It looks properly tough sitting there like this, you can't hardly tell that it was replaced except well it doesn't look anything like any of our neighbors.

That's alright though, I take comfort in knowing that what we had to have done this year will just get more expensive the longer they all wait. Because you see, the insurance companies are beginning to cancel people's coverage if they have that lovely Zinsco power panel on their homes. Cute right? Well, we're safe. They can all come by our place and check out what compliance looks like.

Oh My Goodness!

 It's amazing, but I get to post the very first change to our home that doesn't concern something Infinity screwed up first! Way cool! AND it's obscure to boot!

This is the door to the little storage building that sits in front of the house that Dad had chock-a-block full of old Thunderbird parts, dried paint cans, mouldy camping equipment and my personal favorite, empty boxes to things he no longer owned. Out of sight, out of mind.

However, since this lovely structure was built in 1983 without much thought put into it, there were problems.

Pretty early on Dad and I both noticed that there was no threshold moulding under the door and when he stepped on it it bent pretty sharply. UDC came out and installed the hunk of lumber you see there under the door and painted it and said "See ya". Well, 39 years later that hunk of untreated pine looked like this...

Well the door's frame was just as rotten which is why the door didn't close correctly. 

So we had Robert come out to replace the door. It's a standard door so no problem right? What do you think?

 

He got the old door and framing out and went to test fit the new door. It was almost 3 inches too tall!! WHAT?? We re-measured the door, re-measured the old door, same size. WTF? Test fit again, almost 3 inches to tall. Something was messing with us. Then we both stepped inside the building and let out a collective groan!

There was no header! Instead, the boys at UDC had poured more that 4 inches cement mortar on top of the installed door kit. You can see the impression of the door frame there in the cement but it was not holding the door in place because it was cracked and it moved about. Above this blob of worthless sand and cement is a void of almost 6 inches! 

Why was there no header OR footer on this door? Who knows. Best guess is to fall back on the lack of standards present at the time. There is no one we can ask to be sure.

It certainly explains why every time Dad tried to repair this door it would not stay fixed. The entire door kit could move!

Well Robert removed the blob, installed a proper header, filled the remainder of the void with expanding foam and installed the door kit, in the rain.

He also installed a new footer, you can see it in the picture of the closed door, it is pressure treated redwood. It is not likely to degrade the way the old footer did.

You just gotta love it! In the past I would complain of such things at our first house and Dad would smile at me and say "Ah, the joys of being a homeowner." But I am sure that if he came across this himself he would have griped about it for weeks. I am also sure that someplace he is sitting and watching all of this transpire and just laughing his biscuits off.

If that's the case all I can say is "Alright Dad, I get it. You can stop now."

And Then There Were Eight

 You know, I have reached a point where not only to I detest Infinity Builders, but you just have to laugh now. Only a week or so after our tile guy Steven was here fixing the last tiles that Infinity didn't install correctly and then there was this...

 

Right next to the dining room table. Arrgh. This makes seven tiles that have broken since the installation less than a year ago.

So Steven came back out and with surgical precision removed the offending tile.

Fairly simple right? Or not so much.

I know, you're laughing now too right? Look at the last picture again. Do you see that black and teal multi-tool standing there? Well it turns out that there is a long bolt that passes through the top of it that holds the various blades in place. Well Steven was talking to me while he was changing the blade and said bolt took that opportunity to leap to freedom. We both stood there and watched it fall into the centre of the missing tile but then it bounced and landed on another tile and we both stood by gobsmacked as a not too small chunk of the second tile popped off of the surface.

We looked at each other for a moment and began to laugh, oh well one tile or two, no problem. At least we have them.

And the finished job is so good you cannot tell that it even happened. I'm telling you, this guy is a magician. It is a shame though that Infinity doesn't have talent like this. And now there are eight.

 

Deep Cleansing Breath...

 "In through nose, out through mouth".

When things get accomplished that I have been bitching about for so long, what else can one say? Ahhh.

This past Monday was a flurry of tools and dust once again at IHOD as a few more of the nagging issues on the punch list were crossed off. They always seem to require more work to fix don't they?

In the Master Bathroom we had a broken floor tile! Joyous fun!

This tiny little half moon piece of tile came out of the middle of one of the full size pieces of tile. Tiny little thing isn't it? The repair looks like this!

It's a good thing that the two young men we found to help us with these repairs really know their shit. Steven removed the tile without even scratching one near the one to be replaced and he removed that piece of baseboard without breaking or even damaging the paint! Wow.

 Like it never even happened...

Meanwhile his colleague Robert was busy putting right the number one item on our punch list, the front door. Infinity left us with a front door that you had to really put your weight behind in order to open it. Granted it is a door, but one likes to be able to use the doors in one's home.

Robert found that the door was not installed correctly and after some manipulating, drilling, bashing and screwing our recalcitrant door now open and closes with but one finger, smooth as glass. His comment was something to the tune of "It's much easier to just put these things in right the first time than to come back and fix them." My sentiments exactly. He then went on to fix the other mis-alligned doors in the house and then we cam to the hall bathroom door.

This wonderful construction was so badly installed that it would not close without being forced. Infinity claimed that it was just "sticky", but if you were outside the room and closed the door you could see the entire door frame twist as the door closed. Robert pondered this dilemma for a bit and came up with an ingenious plan.

 Do you see it?

How about now?

What he did was to locate a few key spots in the door frame, drill some pilot holes and then run really long screws into the door frame and into the wall. What that did was sort of twist the door frame out away from the door. (Ah, Physics!) Now the door closes completely with the touch of a single finger and open nice and quietly. Of course he covered the screws and repainted the door frame as well and now you cannot tell the work was done.

Each door he fixed required a different solution, there were six doors that were not functioning correctly. In the space of two to three hours he had all of them functioning the way that they should despite the various blunders of the people that installed them.

There were other broken tiles of course, these two were in the kitchen. One in fact has been broken before. In the post from 10 November 2021 titled "One Step Forward..." I recount the lovely tale of having to replace that which was already complete. Sometime in January the tiles that were repaired this week all broke and we called our contractor to have them replaced. He blamed the problem on the "cheap tile" we tile we had purchased and was not convinced that it had anything to do with his installation. Well when we pull the tiles up we discovered this:

This is the broken piece of tile from the tile that they had repaired after it had been broken. You might see the problem or not. There is NO thin-set on this piece of tile at all. What that means is that it was installed and had a void underneath it and the moment the right weight was put on it it snapped. This most assuredly is the fault of the installer.

However, this week Steven very carefully removed these broken tiles and made everything right again.

 

 Robert also took the time to rehang our entry light. It is tough to see what he did here but he added a 24 inch long section to the shaft the lamp hangs from. It was something infinity missed because they said they could not find the part. Hmm. Well it's fixed now. Thank you Robert.

 

And finally Robert took care of something that we kept meaning to do but just hadn't gotten to.

 

He hung the Doofus Angel!

A gift from Sandra that in the condo hung in a spot where you really couldn't see it and now is in a place of prominence. In fact his presence there above the door causes the door to be renamed, "The Doofus Door"! Everyone should have a Doofus Door!

There is still more to do of course, the electrical project, finishing the garage and cleaning up a few more things from the Infinity List, but repairing the tiles and fixing the doors goes a long way to making me a much happier camper.