Nov 12 - miscommunication ?

Where did we go wrong ?  The Gas Plumbing Services guy shows up to do the fireplace, doesn't know anything about the brick that he doesn't have with him, doesn't know anything about the doors that they'd taken the last visit and need to be cleaned and painted ...

"Hope" calls from GPS and tries to sort this out.  Vicki, the scheduler and person with whom we've been dealing, is in the background; I can hear her talking to Hope.  Hope must be more senior than Vicki.  Even though Sandy confirmed twice with Vicki the price of the replacement bricks, they a) haven't been ordered; b) thought that we were only cleaning and painting the bricks (which, by the way are all cracked and broken; that was the point); and c) the price was wrong ! 

We get this all sorted out and Vicki confirms that they'll be able to do all this next week.  Good.

Vicki calls later in the day to ask what color river rock Sandy wants.  What ?  They haven't been ordered yet ?  How in heck were they supposed to do the install yesterday when one of the components hasn't even been ordered yet ?

This isn't just miscommunication, it's bizarre.

I did go for a bike ride.  Before riding, I trimmed the last doorway (I thought) and cut the baseboard pieces for the fireplace area.  I can't nail those because they might be in the way of the fireplace trim.

The wind is blowing like crazy out there.  It woke me up around 1am and it's been howling ever since.  It might have howled before that too, but I sleep pretty deeply those first 3-4 hours.

As I stood downstairs looking up at the loft, I noticed something.  I haven't trimmed the pocket door into the bedroom wing !!!  Rats !!!  It's 2/3 of a door trim, since there's nothing on the right-hand side, but I don't even have any 3.25" to do it.  I have a small piece for the top of the door but need to pick up another for the left-hand side.  Rats.

Sandy washed windows.  What an amazing difference.  You can see out now !  Mind you, if David had done them, you wouldn't know that there were windows, he gets them so clean.

The other thing that I did before going biking was do a major garage cleanup, putting away all the parts of plumbing (all done), electrical (all done) and all the tools that have been piled up in the garage just at the door to the kitchen.  The thought-it-was-the-last doorway was the garage-side of that door.  I used some of the available 3.25" colonial baseboard, of which I have a pile.

We had trigger fish for dinner.  It was excellent.  Sandy got one of the last fillets from OceanS Seafood.  Kim at OS was telling Sandy that it's in limited supply this year because the open season is only three days !  Now that's a short season !

Today is caulking day, baseboard caulking to be exact.  Vic's guy is also supposed to show up with the glass doors.  The three drawer fronts won't be in until later in the week and will then need painting, so that will drag on a little.  The punch list is down to only a few items at this point. I'll pay Vic today for the balance of the job.

I called the granite guy and said "no one has ever quoted a price to me".  He said "really ?" then "it's a million dollars".  I said "ok, I'll send along a rubber check".  He laughed and said that he'd call back once he got into the office. 

He called while I was out riding and said that they were giving us a special price since I objected to the million dollars, and gave Sandy the number.  Well, it's $500 less than I had budgeted and expected, so that's a good thing. 

I called Sam to talk about the stairs.  He said that the treads were being finished up and they'd be installed by end of week and the railings by the end of next week.  That's all good news.  Once the treads are in, I have to get busy and finish the bamboo hardwood in the loft that butts to the stairs and will be under the railing uprights.  All must be done in order ...

As I suspected, this would take up to Thanksgiving, or thereabouts.  Less than two months for this much work is fairly remarkable. 

New Smyrna Beach is an interesting place.  Everyone is very trusting.  People do work without deposits, in some cases without even providing a quote !, are casual about collecting the rest of their money and they all talk to one another.  It's very small-town-ish.  Everyone is ultra-keen on ensuring that they've done a good job.  Even the gas people were very concerned that their reputation is at stake.  We've used them before, however, and didn't have any problems.  I think that our mistake was in not using a true fireplace outlet for this custom fireplace work. 

It occurred to me as I was riding that I hadn't really done any due diligence on what I was being quoted on the fireplace firebrick work.  Once home, I went online and did some research and found out that the manufacturer of my fireplace insert is out of business but that you can buy the assembled brick by the sheet and cut it to size.  That's one option.  The other approach is to have Lennox do that, so I called them and got a ball-park price.  It's in-line with what I'm being quoted by GPS, slightly less as I'd expect.  I was told by GPS that I was getting it "at cost" and that's probably about right, once you take shipping into account.  As usual, I could do it cheaper -- buy the sheets and use my angle grinder with the appropriate cut-off to do the deed.

These firebrick are pre-cast, mortar included, called a "refractory".  I'd never heard the term before, but this is what Wiki says --

Refractory materials must be chemically and physically stable at high temperatures. Depending on the operating environment, they need to be resistant to thermal shock, be chemically inert, and/or have specific ranges of thermal conductivity and of the coefficient of thermal expansion.
The oxides of aluminium (alumina), silicon (silica) and magnesium (magnesia) are the most important materials used in the manufacturing of refractories. Another oxide usually found in refractories is the oxide of calcium (lime). Fire clays are also widely used in the manufacture of refractories.

With any of these projects, if you get involved enough, you learn new things and also learn new skills.  I learned a few things on this project ...

-- a 12" compound miter saw can cut 6" baseboard but not at 45 degrees (at least not the Dewalt) with a long piece on the right-hand side.  22.5 degrees, yes.  35 degrees (the baseboard at the fireplace), yes.  45 degrees, no.  So that means cutting off at 90 degrees an inch past the miter and then doing the cut that you want.  I did a lot of board flipping as well.  My learning is that the sliding miter saw would have been easier to use for this.  I had 6" board up north as well but of course I had the sliding miter saw.  That said, it did work and it was a delight to use, compared to the Ryobi.  A major part of the difference is the blade supplied with the saw, no surprise.

-- the fireplace stuff.  Had I known some of this beforehand; done my research properly, I probably would have done more myself.  It's pretty easy.  There are a few retaining clips that hold the brick in place.  Cutting it to size would have been easy.  Positioning a burner etc. ... I guess that I simply wanted to have the fireplace done as a "thing" by someone else competent in fireplaces.

-- by the end of today I'll be better at caulking :).  I just hope that my skill level goes up quickly so that it doesn't become a mess !

-- Oh yes, if you order a big sink, make the granite deeper.  It would have been so easy to make the counter depth 25" or 26".  Charlie, watching me struggle to get the plumbing done, said "you know why counter depth is 24", don't you".  "No", says I, not really thinking about it but if I had ...  "So that you get two pieces out of a 4x8 sheet of plywood", says he.  Duh.   There's a reason for everything, even if it's dumb.  Plywood comes in 4x8 sheets.  Heck, for that same reason, Formica comes in 4x8 sheets.  There's nothing magical about "counter depth" with granite.  When you get right down to it, who would care if there's a couple of inches of free space behind the dishwasher, behind the fridge ... a couple of extra inches of counter is HUGE when you think about it.  Oh well.

So ... onward ... a-caulking-I-will-go ...