War Paint

To watch a house go from all white to the colors you have chosen is a wonderful thing. Unless you do not like the colors. To that end, I think I have found one of the few good, dependable, hardworking, sub-contractor in Paso Robles. AScotty Painting. The owner, Scott Strong (no relation to Mack Strong Seahawks fans) is really doing a great job and I would highly recommend him. He has explained the entire process, is not shy about asking for clarification, does not try to impose his asthetic sense on your project, and overall has been a great person to work with.

He does interior and exterior work. If anyone wants his number, please contact me.

p.s. He is not from Paso Robles. I think that explains the work ethic.

By the numbers...

In all of this, I have neglected to communicate the financial cost of using Dave Exline and the Three Little Pigs to build a house. Here is a very crude and incomplete breakdown of the additional costs and time incurred:

• Three Little Pigs Construction Est. cost to build: Slightly under $400k
• Actual cost to build: Over $500k

To be perfectly clear, in my opinion, this house could never have been built for the contracted price. A reading of this book would have helped in this case

A further breakdown of some of the costs

• Cost to correct structural engineering per Patrick Marr Engineering Memo: over $10k
• Reinstall windows correctly: over $7k
• Install heating in Bedrooms and Baths: over $3.5k
• Fix electrical: over $3.5k
  
• Additional loan costs: over $20k.
  

In addition, there was the additional year it took to complete the house when you should be paying on the mortgage and not paying rent somewhere.

To be clear, Dave Exline would argue that all of these costs are overblown and that whoever gave those numbers overcharged. I find that strange in that the cost he estimated for installing heating in the bedrooms and bath was $1100 more than I had it done for.

In some respects, I actually consider myself lucky. I discovered most of the issues with Dave Exlines 'work' before it was closed in and covered up. Imagine if you will, discovering that you have no heating in your Master Bedroom and bath after you move in? Or maybe when you run your microwave and it trips your circuit breaker because the wrong wiring was used. The aforementioned issues are minor when compared to what could happen in a major earthquake with a roof system that was not built according to the Structural Engineers specification.

What I find sad and downright disturbing is that in the various lawsuits Dave Exline has had to defend himself against, some of these types of issues are alleged. These types of problems were also experienced by some of Dave Exlines former customers.

A lot of lessons have been learned. Not only on my part, by I am sure on Dave Exlines as well.

Lemonade to Lemons

During the course of this blog, I have alluded to unilateral engineering changes made by the contractor. To try to illustrate I have put together a couple of pictures that I hope can better tell the story...

These pictures were taken on or about 11/27/2004. This picture is the T-111 that the contractor installed. The roof framing and rough framing inspections had not been completed by this time yet much of what could have been inspected was covered with T-111 and wrap.


The picture below was taken on 4/15/2005 of some of the engineering work that has been completed. Notice that the T-111 was removed, exposing where we had to add metal hangers above the windows. You can also see where plywood was added for shear transfer per the engineering memo



And here is the page from the Structural Engineers memo from 1/19/2005 that shows where shear transfer should have been installed. The detail below is for the top part of the structure specifying plywood


Thanks to Patrick Marrs for the Engineering memo and Semmes and Company for doing the work to get the house to code and to pass roof and rough framing inspections. They made sure that the house did not come down around me.