August 20, 2008

Early Morning Meeting

Last night we arrived at our house to find most of a first floor. It was so exciting! Although the floor wasn’t completely finished, I kept putting Lil C in different areas and telling her "Now you’re in the kitchen," "Now you’re in the laundry room," "Now you’re in the family room." She giggled like crazy and thought that was great fun (Pictures of the progress to come this week!). You always know you’re on the right path when you get the "do it again Mommy" request.

The only thing we weren’t happy about was the placement of our Bilco steps down into the basement. On the plans, it says they are supposed to only stick out from the house 5 feet. In reality, they stick out 8.5 feet. They hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that we ordered an extra deep basement. There are only 11 feet on the side of our house until the next property AND it slopes big time down from the neighbor’s yard.

Mr. BBM and I spent much of last night trying to figure out how we would have to launch things down into the basement from a ramp starting in our neighbor’s yard. We also discussed a wet spot we found in the stone in our basement (the floor has not been poured yet-thank God for that). I won’t go into the details. I’ll just tell you that Mr. BBM discovered that the guys who are framing our house are also using a certain corner of our basement to pee-pee.

Not.

At.

All.

Cool.

So, we met with the Supervisor and Site Foreman early this morning. In case you were wondering what kind of person can think clearly at 7:45 a.m.??? Construction guys can.

The supervisor made some suggestions that I didn’t like. I countered with telling them we really need the area directly out from the Bilco entrance to be flat, not sloped like he proposed. So, he’s going to give us a retaining wall that slopes down on either side. I think it’s a good solution, not a perfect one, but one that will work. He also walked us around our lot and showed us how he’s going to grade it. We’re going to have a very nice flat backyard. I’m very happy about that.

As the framing crew listened to their music and kept working, I asked the supervisor if he minded if I brought up a more "delicate" issue. I asked him if he could please have a porta-potty placed in front of our house. There is one on the street, but it’s kind of a long walk. I understand the guys have to go, but you know, not in my basement. While I understand that they haven’t yet poured the foundation, I don’t want to go into my basement and think about man pee in the corner. I explained in vivid detail as to what we found and his reaction was very similar to mine.

"That’s not right," he said. "I’ll take care of that."

I then mentioned my concern that the guys would be angry I said something and therefore screw up my house. He told me not to worry about that. I wish I could post a picture of the supervisor, because if you could see what he looks like, you would totally believe that he’s taking care of it too. I truly have nothing to worry about. Even the framing guy who looks like one of the guys from ZZ Top will be afraid.

As we were leaving, he walked back over to the crew and gave them the business. Hopefully that will be the end of them doing their "business" in my basement.

***There are some new reviews up at The BBM Review. Check out the Noodleboro reviews for a chance to win one of the games yourself!