Let The Laying Begin

The brick layers not only showed up today, they actually started to work. Yeah, we know, it was four weeks ago that they were supposed to have started, but hey, who cares? El Hefe got a buy-in from T on the mortar color this morning. After that, they seemed to have two brick layers, one cutter and one mortar mixer throughout the day. Forecast is for clear skies today and tomorrow and 50% chance of rain through the remainder of the week.

Chris (electrician) showed up again and worked until about noon. I asked him to run the coaxial cable and the cat-5 cable into the basement.

We got an email from UPS saying the cupolas will be here on Thursday. There will be two crates with a total weight of 1,160 pounds. I forwarded this to "Our" Mike and subsequently called him. I reminded him that I had paid extra for a truck with a tailgate lift to put the crates on the ground. Mike agreed that we may have to uncrate them and carry the individual pieces to the garage. Each cupola should be in three pieces.

Mike also told me that he had talked with Rick (solar) and they intended to lay the underground cable and pour the footings for the inverter rack on Thursday.

I told Mike that we have not yet talked with the painter/stainer. Mike said that the painter/stainer had picked up the samples yesterday and, hopefully, will have some stained samples to show T before we leave next week.

I mentioned to Mike that T got a call from Bret (roofer) yesterday when I was serving jury duty (btw, we hung the guy). Bret had asked T if we had noticed any leaks during the weekend rains. I told Mike I tried to call Bret but never got hold of him. After inspection today, I found no obvious new leaks but I am still not satisfied with the chimney flashing or the nail head masking. Mike said he understood and would talk with Bret.

Security. A couple of weeks ago, we entered into a contract with Frontpoint for security monitor services. The monitoring equipment was supposed to have arrived by yesterday. Today I sent a note to Nathan (salesman) telling him the equipment did not arrive. Long story short, it will be here tomorrow. We also had purchased a video camera directly from Foscam. It arrived last Friday. I spent a frustrating Saturday trying to get it to work and spent over an hour today on the phone with Brandon (India) troubleshooting. Bottom line is that it is busted. When I told Foscam we were leaving town, they offered a full refund. Too bad.

Still no word on when the slate installers will return to finish the job they started.