Yesterday, I was within four days of finishing our sunroom addition. All that was left was the second coat of primer, two coats of final color and varnishing the door at molding. Now, this project started in November of 2008 when, to my everlasting shame, we let a salesman pressure us into signing a contract. Since then, very little has gone right with this project.
The whole thing was subject to us refinancing our existing mortgage. Well, that took about five and one-half months. We finally got our check the first week of May, 2009, and we promptly sent Tri-state Building Specialties a big check. They didn’t wander back until late September. Between October and December, they got about 80% of the room built, and then they went away again for four months or so.
Over that winter, we discovered that we had a couple leaks. When they finally came back, we told them about the leaks and they supposedly fixed them. By June of last year, they had pretty much finished. And I had paid them about 98% of what was owed on the job. I told them that I would give them the final check after the first hard rain so I could be sure that the leaks were fixed. They took the power cord to the heat pump to hold as hostage.
Sure enough, the first hard rain came, and the leaks were still there. So, I went out and bought another power cord (screw them!), and hired another contractor to deal with the leaks. Well, after shelling out more money than I owed Tri-state to get the leaks fixed, we thought we were good. Of course, by this time it was late fall of 2010. We were now two years into the project.
Now, Tri-state only builds the shell. All finish work is up to the homeowner. It took a little time, but I got Judy to go on a couple of shopping trips to pick out things like the slate floor tiles and to begin the search for sconces.
This is all so depressing.
To cut to the chase, it took us all last winter to do things like decide on the final color we wanted for the back wall and what kind of door we were going to put in. (Originally, we weren’t going to have a door, but the rain on the plastic roof is so loud that doors are a necessity.). I had to mud in the rough work the electricians did in installing the receptacles for the lighting in the room which, I admit, took a long time. However, we also found that to use that room in the winter meant we had to run the heat pump almost 24/7 and that just is not economically feasible for us right now! So, it didn’t matter that we had plastic sheeting in the archway leading out to the room all last winter.
The good news was that it appeared that the leaks were dealt with. We got through all the storms of winter without any further signs of leakage. Finally, last week after, now, two and one-half years of this project, I put the first coat of primer on the wall. And that brought out all the little imperfections in the spackling. So, I think I got most of them done, and yesterday, while it was raining very hard outside, I started putting the second coat of primer on the wall. And that was when I saw the signs of the leak.
So, now, at the least, I have to wait a week (mol) for the drywall to dry out. Then we have to decide whether to go back up on the roof and put a bunch more roofing tar in that corner where the sunroom roof and the main roof meet, or to bite the bullet and have the whole house reroofed. I was hoping not to have to deal with that, but it is beginning to look like a probability.
(Fill in a whole bunch of 4-letter words right about here…)
