Yeah, the legal thing is tough because trying to quantify 'pain and suffering' is impossible and everyone has a different opinion. As long as the contractor comes through in the end, <almost> no matter how difficult or long that path is, they kinda', mostly, did fulfill their legal obligation. Of course all of this is my opinion and I am not a lawyer so.... take it for the free thought that it is.
We have evicted the bats (three of the nastier, tougher ones filed an appeal but lost on summary judgement) and cleaned up the attic, and that went pretty smoothly if not cheaply (~$3,500 and I got NOTHING for any of my precious, precious guano!). Color me a happy camper on that front. Next up is blocking off the second floor staircase so we can keep the upstairs.... disaster entirely upstairs. Then a temporary ladder or stair-set outside to the second floor where the hole has to be made so there is access to that floor without the internal staircase. The deconstruction phase it contracted and will begin in two weeks.
I had absolutely no intention of doing any of this and planned on leaving this house, feet- first, with the current roof in place. But seeing as this situation has happened, we would be foolish if we did not consider as many options as possible; the Chinese word for 'crisis' translates roughly into 'danger' and 'opportunity'. The danger part we have to deal with but there is also opportunity to alter the second floor, expand it, change the floor layout, heating / cooling and many other things. And because the rough construction has to happen anyway, and that is by far the bulk of the expense, it does become <fairly> easy to add some things. For example, I am working through a very interesting idea of putting 'blisters' (naval term, not sure what architects call them but the bulges or outward projections on the second floor of a residential building) on one or both sides of the house. The neat thing about this is that the outer part of the projection of, say, four feet, would be 'hung' by the outer walls with the roof trusses carrying the load. Residential houses are built in compression virtually exclusively; this would be a neat twist on conventional building practices, and yield a four or eight foot wider house, at least for the middle 20 feet or so (the blisters would not run full length). A chase running down both sides would further allow heating, electrical, air conditioning, domestic hot water and a pair of chimneys to run up the sides of the house fully enclosed and 'invisible' from inside or outside. So while the project itself is not desirable, it can be made to have desirable side effects and results I think. Anyway, that is what we are working through now- the finish design and what is most desirable, along with the fascinating engineering challenges some of these designs present. I really lucked out and found a structural engineer who is open to my unusual ideas on this and that is great 'cause "we've never done it like that before" really gets in the way of most of this stuff. I can do the design, modeling and calculations but as I am not a structural engineer (wrong denomination), cannot submit designs to the building dept. of my town.... but the gentleman I am working with can do so.
So the whole thing proceeds with much wariness and a fair bit of worry but also great expectations and very positive aspects.... just like most of life I guess.
And I also finally got that gouge out of the stairway bannister.... but cutting out the bannister with a recip. saw and throwing it away. This assumes the new bannister does not come pre- gouged, of course.
Brian
Brian,
Still holding in neutral (see post #51). It'll be two weeks this Friday so I'm hoping that the metal comes in next week and the roof gets completed then. I'm not holding my breath though. If the metal doesn't come in next week I'll be contacting my lawyer and then we'll see what he can do for me. I'm not sure that he can do anything at all. The contract doesn't specify how long the job may take. I was told by two different employees of this roofing company that the job would take no more than 3 days after the tear off, but that wasn't in writing.
What's going on with your house project?