The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I will start with the good.

This past Wednesday I had the pleasure of hooking back up with Alan from WindRiver Timberframes and his crew at a raising near Happy Jack, AZ.

They had been on site since Monday and had the bents already to go by the time we arrived. The monsoons seemed to be in full swing in the area with rain and lighting stopping work a few times but we managed to make quite a dent in the frame by the end of the day.
The house is 4000 square feet, and will really be a beautiful home when completed. As usual Alan and his crew did excellent work on the frame. Although it is only my second raising I am still amazed at the joinery and the way the frame fits together like a glove!!!

Thank you Alan and crew, and thank you Adrian for letting us help with the raising, as usual it was a real pleasure working with all of you.

Now for the bad and the ugly.

I am sure every project of this size has its bumps in the road. We have hit our real bump in the road. My wife and I have taken quite some time up to now paying attention to detail and trying to make sure that we are doing the right things constructing this house.

As I write this it seems that it will be a miracle if we ever get a roof on this house. The roofing company we hired to install the metal roof got a late start which got things off on the wrong foot. So to pacify me what I would guess would be a third string crew was sent out to get started installing the fascia wrap. To make a long story short it was installed on a Friday, and with few words spoken on my part it was removed on Monday. I should mention that nearly half of the fascia wrap had been installed.

So by now as you can imagine my suspicions are up as to what kind of job will be done. Work progresses slowly and next the crew moves onto installing the roof panels. These are rolled out on site. The panels look terrific!! I feel as if we are on our way and what had started out as a marginal job looks to really be coming together. WRONG!!! Wednesday rolls around and no crew shows up for the day. I am assured that they will be there the next day. They are there the next day. At 11:30 AM leaving at 4:30. I now know why work has progressed so slowly.

Where the craftsmanship comes in to play is in the flashing in my opinion. I have yet to find any when it has come to the flashing. By Friday I have had several conversations with the representative from the company, some of them rather heated. Without saying anything he has offered to refund my money and remove all metal that has been installed.

I have met with one other company and will be meeting with another one on Monday. My hopes are to come up with someone that can get on the project relatively soon due to the fact that the monsoons are under way and we are watching all of it just hit the ground.

I will be the first to admit that we are being very critical but when you see the pictures that follow you will see that there is absolutely no craftsmanship involved in the job that is being performed.

So I am feeling pretty confident that we will be moving onto another company and hopefully be getting a metal roof on at some point.

Work continues on the inside with most of the second floor Aspen being completed. We have been told that the windows that we have ordered should be arriving on site this Thursday, so we can get under way installing them.

Also all 4" pipe has been buried and is ready to connect to the rain catch tank, so we are ready to catch rain as soon as we can get a roof installed.