So we definitely just had to kick a squatter out of our house today

We had a call with our contractor today on the progress of the house. Because of the weather yesterday, there was frost on the house and they couldn’t redo the siding. And they probably won’t come do it on new years eve. So they are “definitely” starting on Wednesday “at the latest.” I feel a bit of deja vu but whatever. Let’s be zen about this I guess.

We asked him what he would do in the meantime next week.

Electrician, maybe plumber, maybe roof inspector if we can get access to the roof. Apparently, the siding guy met the neighbor and he said he might let us access the roof through his house. Nice. We should go meet the neighbors.

The real crazy shit that he said very nonchalantly as a passing thought was that the siding guy saw a mattress or two in the house.

Wait, what?

Yeah, looks like there are some squatters in there. He also said he saw some needles. He didn’t really want to go in.

Whoa. Okay. I’m kind of freaked out. I looked at my boyfriend. We will go by and take a look.

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When it’s been two months and all we’ve done is demolish the place

Yes, friends, we have been paying a mortgage since October and so far, all we have to show for it is a house with no walls.

I have been diligently texting my contractor twice per day (he mostly doesn’t bother answering the second text) and two weeks later, we’ve picked out a door, and the siding style (beveled not rounded, whatever that means – its still cheap vinyl siding), and nothing else has happened.

Besides of course a flurry of emails and phone calls and texts that still don’t leave us with a clear timeline on when this whole thing is going to get done.

I just found out this morning that the siding guy is delayed (again again) because of the rain. Fine.

There’s no such thing as a vacation from renovations

We spent this last week vacationing in St. Croix, where my boyfriend is from. Along with seeing family, getting his driver’s license renewed, and tanning at the beach, we ended up semi-yelling at our contractor. Twice.

The last time any work was done on the house was the day before Hurricane Sandy. Yep. 6 weeks and still nothing has been ordered and nothing has been started. We also asked just about a million times to at least have a materials budget sent to us so we could start picking out stuff now and actually have time to deliberate on what we want.

It finally came to a head this week. Boyfriend’s family does construction and renovations on the island so we set up a call with the contractor and semi-ambushed him with the family. We ended up having a very convoluted call where I finally had to say, Listen, all we want is the materials budget so we can start picking stuff out–wait let me finish–so if you could just break everything down for us and give us an exact timeline on when everything is going to be finished–hold on, let me finish–then we can start planning for it.

He said by Wednesday he would have it for us.

We get it on Friday.