It was an unexpected surprise. Actually, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was elated! It was approaching 7:00 p.m. and there was a flurry of activity taking place at the construction site (aka – our future home).
As we finished up dinner with friends at a restaurant in Austin, I asked if they had some extra time. I wanted to know if they would like to go by and look at the home we are having built. They had asked for a status update while we were in the car driving to the restaurant.
The past couple of weeks haven’t seen a lot of activity, but I’m learning that Rome wasn’t built in a day and there is still a supply chain issue of sorts. Who would have thought that you can get this but you can’t get that and you need both?
Two weeks ago, the board and batten siding was supposed to be put in place. Actually, the projected work schedule provided us at the beginning of that week listed both installing the siding and painting the siding. Most of our home is stone, but it is accented by the siding that guarantees the farmhouse look. Would you believe the hold-up was metal strips that go between the sheets of hardiplank? Nothing happened two weeks ago. For that matter, nothing was happening on Tuesday of this week when we were last at the home.
By happenstance, we did run into our builder. He actually isn’t the job superintendent who is managing the construction, but he designed the house and has some level of oversight on the project. He is not a disinterested party.
We mentioned to him that the masons who were stoning the house next door were doing an incredible job. Would they be the same people working on our house? Probably was his answer, but he didn’t know what their work schedule looked like.
His not knowing their work schedule took the wind out of my sails. In my simplistic way of thinking, I just naturally assumed they would finish the house next door and begin working on ours. I guess you could say that my automatic default is magical thinking. In a perfect world – maybe, but ours is not a perfect world.
Actually, as we drove up to the house last night, the work crew was busily working. Stone masons had already made an appreciable difference. I could hardly believe my eyes. I breathed a sigh of relief. The stone we selected for the house was going to look incredible.
I was like a kid in a candy store. A work crew had already installed board and batten on part of the house and they were busily working on installing more.
It was an unexpected surprise, but it was a perfect ending to what had been a most enjoyable evening.
All My Best!
Don
Carpe Diem 