Excitement Building...

I just came back from the house. I wanted to see if they had put the subfloor in. As I was leaving SewerSide³, I checked my phone: Fred had called, but because the condo has no cell reception (for which, sadly, I canNOT blame SS³, but rather must turn my ire to Shit-ingular/ATT), I had missed the call. The call was at 12:30 this afternoon. I knew it was too much to hope that Fred was calling to tell me he was going to be at the house at 3:45 (when I was heading over), but my hopes were raised anyway.

He wasn't there. But something else was:

Oh, yeah, baby. Looks like that little pile of kindling in the backyard wasn't the framing supplies after all.


Man, this is a lot of wood...

but now I'm not sure this is everything... I'm sure the trusses aren't in there...

A hole has also appeared in the east wall of the front bedroom (the old office)...

they've blown it out, I assume, to wall it all in smoothly (to remove any trace of the window), for the stairwell.

Of course, they'll need to do the same to the south wall of the same room... but I figure they're waiting to do that around the same time they blow out the south wall of the kitchen (for the breakfast nook)... that way, the view from the front stays as "normal" as possible for as long as possible.

It really does look like framing will start tomorrow. I tried to call Fred from the worksite, but all I got was his voicemail, so I left him a message, saying that I saw his call, giving him the phone number at the condo, and letting him know I'd be there in about 15 minutes or so if he wanted to call.

As I was walking the long way around the parking lot from the car toward the condo (this elevator work and the blocking off of the hallway is getting OLD), my phone buzzed, and it was Fred. I didn't want to have him call me back, so I stood will my arms full of Maxine mail, condo junk mail, the digital camera, and the phone, and talked to him in the parking lot (since I knew the call would die if I moved any further toward the unit). He was at Maxine today, and was there around noon for the delivery of the framing supplies (looks like we missed each other by about 45 minutes... damn).

He's very excited. As he put it, in the next few weeks, "we're really going to rock'n'roll... no more of this nickel and diming." I took that to mean "and so we should probably, I don't know, meet because there's a boatload of wood that we've bought that you're supposed to pay for" (since the next 70K check is supposed to be when they begin framing); so I asked when he wanted to meet. We could meet this Sunday, he said, but it would be better to meet the following Sunday... there would be much more to look at and show off at that point. He never mentioned a check.

Man, I like this guy.

I said that I was pretty blown away by what I've seen so far, that it looked pretty neat and clean. He said, "Much different from last week, eh?" He said that he's cruising by about every other day, so he's pretty happy with the progress thus far. He said that he talked to neighbor Linda today and told her that the next couple of weeks are going to be a little noisy. He said she laughed about as loudly as I was when I heard the story.

I asked when the next time he's be at the house. He said tomorrow. I told him to call me and let me know when he's there, and I'd pop by and say hello (and tell him about the minor changes we'd like to make to the plan... but I didn't tell him that yet). He didn't know when exactly he'd be there, but he was thinking sometime between 11am and 2pm. I told him I had a meeting from 10 to 11, but would be back no later than 11:30. He told me to call him when I was available, and then he'd be better able to tell me exactly he was going to be by the house, as he had "a couple of thousand things to do" tomorrow.

So tomorrow we meet. And I'll bring the checkbook.

Tomorrow we start framing. I cannot wait.