We sounded out the meetings yesterday: fortunately none of them were three hours long.
The first meeting of the day had more to do with computers and databases and volunteering that I'm doing and less to do with the house. But, the developer and I had a conversation that went something like this (after I mentioned to Susan that I had a house meeting shortly thereafter):
"Oh, you're building a house. My wife and I just built a house last year."
"Yeah. It's just a hole in the ground with some concrete -- at the moment. You know..."
"Where are you building?"
I told him. "The Riverbend area. Riverside."
"I live in in Riverside." He grinned. "Do you know that big park? I back onto that. Well, my neighbor backs onto it, but the kids just walk along the fence into the park, well..."
"We're just down the street fromt he showhome, there."
"Really? We're just about neighbors. My kitchen window looks across at those showhomes."
And then we did some real work.
Part Two
The second meeting was oddly engaging. We are apparently the casual-customers. That is, we're not crazy and demanding -- and the showhome folks like it when we drop by. They made sure it was okay, of course, but they wanted to know if they could use our contractor meeting as a quasi-training session: rather than a salesman, contractor, and purchasers meeting, we had a salesman, sales assistant, contractor, contractor-in-training, and purchasers meeting. It made for a cozy fit around the little table.
The gist of it was:
(a) Wink wink -- don't go around the site when people are working. It's dangerous, and if you fall in the hole or get a load of shingles dropped on your head, well, we told you so...
(b) Who the heck scribbled all these weird notes all over your blueprints? The sales-dude? Oh, that explains it.
(c) Don't freak out at what the house looks like UNTIL you move in. It will look perfectly nice on that day, until which time we are still building and cleaning and honing -- and after which time your mess is your problem.
There are still some schedualling backups because of last week's bone-chilling weather. The framing is actually (factually) schedualled and booked. There are less-apparent things to be done on the site before that time: our contractor, Miles, mentioned something about piles and safety-stuff that are due sometime this week, I think.
It's a big ol'complicated process, but it seems we're in competent hands. So yeah... w00t!w00t!
January 18, 2005 after 9AM
| code
, house
, volunteer
, weather
, weird
| this is more
