"You Better Have a Good Attorney"

Those were the words contractor Shawn said to Curt as he walked out of the courthouse in the town of Fairplay yesterday afternoon. Back turned, of course. I was already inside the car but I could hear it. I’m going to file that under “Things I Wouldn’t Say if I Just Soundly Lost a Court Case.” Yesterday at 3pm we faced our first contractor in a civil courtroom in order to recoup some of the money we spent finishing contracted items that were unfinished by him, or done incorrectly. Like the numerous doors and windows that were sized wrong, and the hundreds of brackets that weren’t nailed, and the beams that were put in unsupported, and the asymmetrical window overhang on the front of our house, and the unfinished Tyvek wrap, and the holes in the floor that were never patched as promised. There were many, many more items and Curt had them all documented and photographed, with emails saved and printed along with our bid. We sued for breach of contract in the amount of $6,800 (the max for a civil case is $7k). 


Shawn not only did not explain or justify anything Curt presented, but he flat out lied about the nature of our contract. He stated it was on a time and materials basis, whereas what we had agreed to and brought multiple documents to prove was that we had signed a contract that was a bid listing tasks Shawn would complete for a final fee that was paid in full by us. Shawn told the judge that in spite of an original invoice, as well as a revised invoice and numerous emails that backed up Curt’s claims, that he “looked Curt in the eye and they shook hands” for this other deal. He also testified under oath that Curt never gave him a chance to fix his errors, even though Shawn stopped returning Curt’s emails and phone calls back in August. At one point, the judge seemed a little incredulous, asking Shawn why he wasn’t even defending his work. He also quickly dismissed Shawn's countersuit of $1,800 that he wanted for the fifth week of work. When you agree to a bid, the length of time you work does not matter. You are contracted to finish the work listed for the fee that was agreed upon. He stopped working and said he would not start again until Curt paid him more than what our contract was for.

It was apparent that the judge sided with Curt’s 20-minute testimony almost immediately. Curt’s documentation and explanation was extensive. Neither of us being all that familiar with courtrooms and lawsuits (I've never even had jury duty - not that there was a jury present - it was just us, Shawn, the judge and the sheriff), unfortunately where we made a misstep was focusing so much on proving that Shawn did poor and unfinished work, rather than bringing in documentation that would help the judge land on a dollar value to award us. I thought it was more like we would win or lose, and we would get the amount we sued for, or something like that. But I guess it’s a lot like doing your resume or taxes: quantify and justify, and back everything up. We backed up the decision easily but not the dollar value. Live and learn! But I learned another great skill of my husband’s. If he ever can’t get a job in sales, or as a realtor, or a chef, or a furniture maker, or a campaign manager, or a camp counselor, or a house builder…he should definitely audition for a courtroom drama. So while we didn’t even get a quarter of our attempted amount back, and may never see anything anyway if Shawn continues to be squirrely as he has been in the last six months, Curt and I agreed it felt good for someone to say we were right, and that we were wronged. The whole experience stung since it was right when we got started on our project, full of excitement and trust that was rooted in our urgency. The judge said as we walked out that he wished he could have awarded more, but that courts don’t award speculative damages. Luckily Curt had a little bit of documentation of the hours spent by other contractors who fixed Shawn's errors, as well as written testimony from them.

Anyway, Shawn muttered that threat to Curt outside the building while they walked to their cars because he filed an appeal. We learned from the sheriff that the appeal doesn’t revisit the decision, nor the fine, but rather whether the rules of law were followed, so perhaps Shawn should have considered bringing his own attorney in his first go around in the courtroom, not the appeal…

Not a Normal Sunday

After fighting ski traffic to get to our house Saturday morning and then working late and getting home at midnight Saturday, Curt decided to take Sunday off. This was not like the Saturday we took off a few weeks ago, because that was planned and therefore full of errands and hardly a real “day off.” This was an unexpected day off, with both of us at home, because Curt was absolutely exhausted and fighting off a cold. It was made even better by the fact that I stayed home Saturday to clean the house, catch up on three loads of laundry, cook, bake cookies, get our dogs groomed, etc. Which meant that on Sunday, we woke up before 7am out of habit, then went back to sleep until almost 9am. Unheard off. The dogs were beside themselves, they love sleeping in even more than Curt does. It meant that I spent over an hour cooking a big lazy breakfast, which looked like this (minus the bacon in the oven and my favorite olive batard in the toaster):

It meant we then spent a few hours on the couch watching movies, only getting up to run errands at Home Depot and Lowe’s (of course). Curt was motivated to leave the couch because we had $859 in returned ABS pipe pieces. Four huge trash bags of little black parts of pipe. As we told the poor woman who had to ring in all our returns piece by piece, “you should have seen what we bought!” Because it looked like this, required four people to check us out and resulted in not only the longest receipt I’ve ever seen but the most comments and stares we’ve ever gotten on a Home Depot trip:

It meant we came home and cooked another long lazy dinner with NY steaks and asparagus on the grill and a bottle of Oregon pinot. It meant we watched our Sunday night Showtime shows in their original airing (most Sundays we don’t get home until after 9pm, and then just shower and go straight to bed), and went to bed early in a clean fluffy bed with clean fluffy puppies. It was the best kind of lazy – in a clean house, caught up on errands and with a fridge full of homemade food, finally. Doesn’t happen too often these days!

Older

Tuesday was my 33^rd birthday. I found out last week that a girl who teaches a class at my gym went to the same college I did. She told me she graduated from the University of Arizona in ’05 and I told her I graduated in ’01. She literally froze and finally said, jaw essentially dropped, “I thought you were so much younger than me!” I definitely don’t think that’s a compliment. When a cute 28-year-old girl tells you that, it feels the same as it did when I was 13 and looked like I was 7, just that I’m still immature and awkward. I always thought there would come an age where looking young seemed like a benefit, rather than annoying because I could never use a fake ID. Or that there would be a time where we would match up with our friends by age again like in school. Most of our friends in Seattle were older than us, and here most seem to be younger than us. Some by almost 10 years. I’m not sure how or why that is. Am I becoming even less mature? I’ve never wanted to return to a specific, younger age. Life gets so much more interesting and infinitely better each year. I’m happy to be 33 and will be happy to be 34 next year. I can’t say I will be so thrilled about 35, or god forbid 40, which is when Life Ends I hear. Seems like things look up again at 50 and 60 though. I’m over halfway there!

This is my fifth birthday in Colorado. The first was spent grilling filet mignons at home less than a month after moving to Colorado. It was pretty romantic because Curt hadn’t even moved here yet and it was his first visit. And as they say, absence does make the heart grow fonder. My second birthday here was our second day ever snowboarding together at A Basin. My third was spent snowboarding in a foot of fresh powder in Breck, which is the day it became my favorite mountain. They were celebrating Mardi Gras a little early and playing bayou tunes for us to listen to in the lift lines. Last year, we spent the weekend before my birthday crashing with a visiting friend in Vail at the Four Seasons (thanks Adam!). Snow, beer, crab legs, martinis, chips, sunshine, friends…everything I love! The weekend before my birthday this year was not spent in a 5-star hotel room, we slept on the cold concrete floor in our basement boiler room staring up at tarps and a maze of disconnected pipes and wires. While it may not have been as plush and luxurious as last year, I can honestly say it was still about as exciting. Just a different kind of exciting.

My family sent incredibly thoughtful gifts and cards this year and I’m obsessed with checking out library books on my new Kindle that Curt bought after many hints and much prodding. My mom included the note below in her package and it couldn’t more accurately describe what my life feels like right now. We come home every Sunday night with sawdust inside and out of our clothes, pockets, ears, noses, hair, mouth and places you can’t even imagine! It takes a full week to get the sawdust out of our noses and then we start the process all over again. Our dogs can’t blow their noses and they are much closer to the ground, poor things. A hot shower and a Sonicare have become the highlights of our weekends. But right now I have a sea of pink and red heart-covered cards on my refrigerator to help me forget about all that. The perks of being a Valentine baby! I have always been lucky to be loved on that day whether I was 5, 15 or 33, single or in a relationship or married.

I finally changed a few things on this blog. One is that I will stop using tiny text. It has been my equivalent of whispering, which I realize is ridiculous. I have felt guilty about it because my mom prints these pages and mails them to my grandmother Eloise in Kentucky and I’m sure it’s as hard for her to read as it is me, and others have complained. I’m 100% embarrassed that anyone reads this anyway but I’m doing in a public forum on the internet so I shouldn’t be so shocked and mortified when I find that someone has typed in the address or clinked on a link. Also, I made the background white which I wanted all along and just figured out how to change. Another thing I wanted all along was “Building” to be in the title. In the old template, the title wrapped funny and I didn’t like it, couldn’t fix it and just deleted it. Probably the most important word though. We are not yet living The Modern Mountain Life, nor do I even know exactly what it looks like yet. We’re building it. The house and the life. It’s a work in progress and maybe always will be. It probably should be. This goes to show how much I  know about blogging. Maybe I will check out “Blogging for Dummies” on my Kindle.

So Close, So Far

We've spent the last two weekends continuing to work on the PEX, electrical and plumbing. Seemed like the bulk of the work was done, but man, the finishing details are killer. The layers of pipes and wires grows and grows each weekend. We have red, white, blue, gray and black pipes plus gray, yellow, black and white wires sticking out everywhere. Curt spent all day last Friday with a few contractors and a plumber to run our sewer lines and put in our drains for the toilets and sinks. Even though they got home after midnight, they only got about two-thirds finished. Remind me to never even look at a house this big ever again no matter how great a deal it is. There is no small task in this house. Even when I think we’re done with something, we are SO far from being done! Buttoning up each step of the PEX and plumbing and electrical seems to be taking way longer than pulling the pipes and wires themselves. We also built the frame for our master tub and a trapezoid shaped wall frame that was left open.

I screwed those bad boys down!

I cut all those fine pieces of wood!

Wires and pipes everywhere - those black pipes are for the upstairs bathroom tub, toilet and sink

Future site of kitchen cabinets and the 2nd sink, 2nd dishwasher 

I cut the beautiful angles for that trapezoid!

Unfortunately the plumber we’re loyal to is booked until 2/18 which delays our inspections as well as us getting our heat a bit, but we still had plenty to do up there last Sunday and plenty ahead this weekend as well. Last Sunday I spent most of the day putting up the brackets for the PEX heating the loft while Curt did more electrical. We used different brackets this time and I was on scaffolding rather than a ladder, so it was actually pretty fun because 1) I wasn’t terrified for my life (might be a slight exaggeration) and 2) I wasn’t terrified I was going to destroy the house. Curt was off doing his own work so he wasn’t there to tell me what I was doing wrong. Truthfully I do many of the tasks he gives me wrong, so it was a win-win all around. We got a pretty good crimped kink in that part of the PEX when we installed it, but Curt already cut it out and patched it. Hopefully we don't have any trouble with the air test and the inspection. 

I used that red scaffolding to screw brackets into the PEX snaked through those floor joists above - view is from the kitchen looking at the powder room and mudroom on the left and pantry and wine room on the right, plus the glass front door

We tinkered with the wires and the electrical box for the septic system outside which was a bitterly cold, frustrating hour that hopefully we don’t repeat this weekend. Even though he said he was done with electrical last weekend, somehow that is not the case and we have an electrician joining us Saturday to wrap some things up while I put in striker plates on the studs to protect from nailing or drilling into the wires for every single outlet and light switch in the entire house. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, two kitchens, two living rooms, two dining areas, two garages, eleven closets, a boiler room, a workshop room and outdoor lights outside three doors and two garage doors…all with multiple outlets and light switches. Yeah.

We’re spending the night again Saturday but my fingers are crossed that we only have a few more weekends without heat, or at least insulation. We took down our plastic sheeting over the laundry room and moved the wall-mounted gas fireplace to the basement so we no longer have a “bedroom” and I’m curious to see where Curt puts us next! We’re also going to bring up the gas fireplace we bought for our master bedroom. Curt needs to modify the framing we built to add some support because it’s super heavy. We still need to buy the wood stove for the basement but that’s low on my priority list since we will swap it out for a Preway later anyway. We need one more bathtub. We now have a bunch of shower and tub faucets and drains. We have a pedestal sink for the basement bathroom. We even picked up a vanity for the main floor guest bath. We’re hashing out plans to build our own vanities in the two other bathrooms – a wood shelf in the powder room and hopefully a concrete slab counter with basin sinks in our bathroom. A few bathroom ceiling fans and a bunch of can lights have been hung but we’re still working through lighting details in pretty much every single room. It’s bizarre to talk about the room as if it’s finished and ready for lights, when in fact I’m still staring at wood with no walls, no floor, no furniture/cabinets/appliances to get the placement of lights correct… 

Curt installing a ceiling fan in one of the guest bathrooms

The recessed lighting in our last house was wildly incorrectly placed over our dining table and kitchen island which always drove me crazy, and now I’m in the middle of doing it myself which is a humbling learning experience that I’m sure to get quite wrong! We can’t even decide upon the orientation of the dining room table, much less where the lights need to be hung over it. In the span of each day - every day - the thoughts in my head range from pride and excitement over what we’re doing and the fast progress we’re making to wondering if it’s taking too long to doubt over the decisions we’ve already made and absolute terror for those that still need to be made, not to mention frustration, exhaustion, so much respect for my husband and a lot of annoyance at him too ;) Many times I daydream about the next house we will work on together, and many times I ask myself what the H-E-L-L we are doing. We’ve been saying we’re close to getting heat for the last month or two, so it will be a huge step to get past these projects and onto a totally different phase of the house. So let's hope that's soon! 

Our great room fireplace in its home

Cozy Corner

It might be jumping the gun just a hair, but when this lamp went on sale at cb2 to $199 (from $249) with free shipping right before Christmas, we bought it for our future living room. Our first official new piece of furniture for the house! We have a cb2 lamp in our living room now and it's probably gotten more comments than any other piece of furniture we've owned. There is a little corner between the fireplace and the big windows in our living room that this big tripod tilting photography-style lamp will live in. Along with a cozy chair (hopefully big enough for two) with an ottoman or a chaise, and maybe a basket of blankets alongside. Ahhhh. Sounds good on this super snowy day in Denver.

Our dogs would probably destroy this, but it looks so comfy

Wide but not deep enough

Love these IKEA chaises side-by-side
(probably my front-runner)

And in my dreams, an Eames...