Material discretion; Floor tile and the Michigan bottle deposit scam

Hello Newman.

Work is moving forward nicely and the trades are are taking over. Electrical, plumbing and the boiler guy are all on site daily so our focus has turned slightly towards finishes -- most notably the kitchen floor. The gc has been hired to deliver basically a warm lit shell. When he leaves we will have a painted drywall box without finishes so we can take over and fuss with them for the next two years. This fussing began in earnest this week with the discovery of of an abandoned stock of encaustic tile at the Historical society of Albany NY back door warehouse. According to Alli 'encaustic tile' is just like regular tile only heavier, more difficult to work with and with a lead time of about 16 weeks. it's also pretty much up to one guy named 'Gustavo' in the area to order and deliver it and he stopped returning our calls 3 weeks back. The minute you try to call in your designer discount the phones go off the hook the offices of Gustavo Inc. It all began via cryptic text message photo from a friend in Albany:

I'm pretty sure that's the lost Arc of the Covenant up there on the left.

On an off-chance we might be interested he snapped a photo of this abandoned stock of tile at the local salvage yard and sent it on. 10 minutes later he was pulling together an order over the phone while we looked up the color codes online. All in all we found and ordered about 29 boxes of this forgotten stuff from an old man in Albany who was glad to move the inventory. Apparently a distributer in the north east gave up on the local branch and after finding the costs to ship the inventory back to California too high - donated the lot to the Albany Historic Society, who have been pushing this boxes around the warehouse for months. All in all we saved about 75% off the Gustavo rate and we're supporting the smugness of re-use and rehab approach - but with one siginificant caveat. The original seller of these bailed on the shipping costs for a reason. these 8x8 tiles are incredibly heavy - so much so that only 13 fit in a box to keep the boxes manageable at around 40 lbs. The 300 square feet we've bought weighs in somewhere north of 1200 lbs - or just a little too much for most conventional shipping. In fact, it's a little too much to fit in just about any conventional car and since we now portage via volvo instead of the pickup truck this gets trickier... What has resulted is a calculation formula not unlike Kramer and Newman's number crunching to crack the michigan bottle deposit scam from Seinfeld. The weight, gas use, vehicle size and one-way vs. two-way rental agreements have locked me in the house Howard Hughes style trying to find the way not to undo the great deal with a ridiculous delivery cost. But, in the mean time Sean was kind enough to bottom out the Jetta to drop off a few boxes on his visit to town this weekend:

Delivery standards; Keeping up with the Konstruction

Firstly, let me apologize for the lack of updates. Much has happened in the last few weeks and rest assured it is always my intention to document it with self mocking commentary. I'm afraid I've been remiss in my blogular duties and instead have focused all of my efforts curating my other blog about meat and it's deliciousness. This is also not true and took me over three weeks to falsify that blog with back posts and user comments just to get out of keeping up on the house updates.

Secondarily, I'd like to present a new progress rating system for work on the house and in an effort to engage my wife in this I've applied a rating system she is likely to follow: a Kardashian Scale of Phase Delivery or KSOPD. Bear with me as I explain, I'm certain this will become a job site standard along with the schedule of values and the Gantt chart.

In descending order of KSOPD we have Kim- representing pretty on the outside - a little empty on the inside but the general hollywood standard right now of the complete package as well as the delivery standard for our project:

I am Armenian, so of course I am obsessed with laser hair removal!

Next down in KSOPD is Kourtney - representing a mixed bag of incomplete issues - sometimes put together but mostly hanging on to false facades. Plus she has a love child and that's like the construction equivalent of a stop work order:

being a celebrity is fabulous!

Third on the KSOPD list is Khloe representing the failures, short comings and general construction miss-haps that have plagued this house. I'm not sure if this is very representative of her personality but I did find this photo which I think supports my position:

I once scissor kicked Lindsay Lohan.

As to the state of the house....we chose to build a new slab foundation to replace the non existing one. hand dug excavation - trucks full of gravel and cement and in 1 day total we had this:

The work was quick the quality high and though the demolition continued to look like Khloe the foundation was set and stable for the first time in a hundred years. And though "solid foundation" jokes abound... this is Kim Approved

Following foundation work the mason's got going and made relatively quick work of the party wall, while trying to protect as little as possible of my neighbors lawn and fence. The work took a little over a week through some bad weather was well executed and is near total completion.

The doors are in and they look great. most of the bricks used were just taken out of the wall, cleaned up and re-set. aside from some repointing around the door the masons have moved on after a job well done. Status of completion: Kourtney

Almost immediately the Framing began and to their credit the crews have been working Saturdays to get back on schedule. The work is fast and *mostly* right and what isn't exact we can amend or learn to live with.

We've got 90% of the framing in, and we should be weather tight in next two days - status: Kourney