...and in conclusion...
Framing went quickly
from there as we moved into the winter months. Framing is the fun part. Everyday
there would be something new and it seemed as if the job would get done way
ahead of schedule. Ha! It was loud and dirty. Worse, there were "situations" as
Mike called them. Once the roof came off, the back wall started to lean back. A
good 2" back. It seems that previous owners had removed a load bearing wall that
separated the living room from the dining room and that in combination with the
bay window was too much weight. The back wall needed to be rebuilt (added cost
of approx. $10,000). Then, they discovered that the garage couldn't bear the
weight of the 2nd floor because it was done with 2x6s instead of
2x8s, was framed incorrectly, and was made of plywood in the ground rather than
cement so it was rotting out. The entire garage had to be rebuilt with steel and
cement (added cost of over $15,000).
Then it got cold.
Really, really cold. It was a bad winter here. Once the framing was done and
they broke through the inside ceiling, it was impossible to get the house warm.
The thermostat never read about 60 degrees. We slept huddled around space
heaters. On top of that, work seemed to slow down. It was the "mechanical" stage
where the plumbers and electricians did their thing. Nothing exciting to look
at.
Over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend I asked my mom to take the girls so they could be warm and comfortable and Eric and I could get things a little more organized. We were essentially living out of the den now. On that Saturday morning, I woke up on the den couch after sleeping in my clothes, under 2 blankets and went to use the bathroom. The sink faucet wouldn't work. I turned around and looked at the bathtub. Now we had problems with this bathtub for years. It would take hours for it to drain. We were told it was because the pipes were ancient. Now the bathtub had about 2" of black water backed up with ice chips floating in it. That was it. I told Eric that as long as the kids weren't there I wanted to stay in a hotel that night. We looked around and found the single night rates to be ridiculous, so we decided to move out for a week as the cold spell was only expected to be a few days (Ha!). I went to work. Eric called me and said that he found an apartment at the Chesterfield condos, fully furnished, but it was a monthly rental. I told him to take it. I was waving the white flag. I didn't want to sleep another night in that house.
It was an acceptable second floor apartment, 2 bedroom, 2 bath. Hotel-style furnishings. Manageable because I was able to loaf wi-fi. The girls enjoyed sharing a room, and we celebrated Laini's 7th birthday while we there. However, the apartment was cold all the time. We could never get the place warm. Warmer than the house, but not by much. I thought we'd be in the condo for a month. Not even. In an effort to speed things along and work more efficiently, Mike went ahead and gutted the only remaining working bathrooms. We were now going to be out until the finishing stages. One month turned into two. We had to give the landlord 3 weeks notice if we needed an extension. Unfortunately, we crossed signals with her and she thought we were ready to move out when we weren't and she signed a lease with someone else. She was willing to move us to another apartment, but we declined and moved into a suites hotel instead. We stayed there for a month. Good thing too, because the condo had electric heat and we ended up with a $760 bill for 5 weeks worth of electricity!! At the hotel, we didn't use the phone because the rates were ridiculous so we used our cell phones for everything. I have a cell phone plan which allows for 850 minutes a month, unlimited nights and weekends. I ended up using approx. 1400 minutes each month we were out. Ouch. Next...