Arrrrrrghh!
The Nemesis of the Homeowner
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This is one of the 'I told you so' stories. We've said over and over again here that it is not a good idea to try to build a home from a distance.
You need to BE there, daily, day in and day out. You need to know what is happening every step of the way. Why? Because for every outstanding subcontractor out there there are three or four who have that 'do the bare minimum' attitude which translates to: I don't care what the homeowner wants, I am going to do things in the easiest possible way for me and that's that. The following space-eating ductwork is a case in point. |
 Lesley called in our General Contractor, Bob Manseill, to share some discouraging words about the ductwork that was being done on the main living floor. "What are these things doing here?!" Lesley asked. And Bob shrugged. "Dunno, let's look," he said. |
 And off he went, diving into the wild blue yonder of some seriously black holes behind the tongue and groove. These holes, of course, were in the wall between the kitchen and the master bedroom closets, but they are black holes nevertheless. What a trooper, that Bob! |
 When he came up for air Bob said that the offending ducts were put there for good reason; meaning, it was not that easy to organize duct work in a log home like this. They had to be pretty much where they were put, he said, apologetically. |
 "The HVAC subcontractor, in this case, decided where these ducts needed to be on his own, without asking us even for our opinion, and now we are stuck with the problem??" we asked. "Probably," Bob said, "unless you want to start tearing some walls out." Which we didn't. We had worked so hard when designing this house to reserve adequate space for things like built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases and walk-in closests – and suddenly they were gone. OUT LIKE A LIGHT. We left the property late one afternoon and came back the next morning and POOF! – those precious spaces had been tampered with! The above duct was unceremoniously carved out of a much prized walk-in closet... |
 ...and this monstrocity ate a huge chunk out of some built-in bookshelves in Lesley's bedroom; not to mention one of similar size that gouged an equally awful hole in Dr. Ellen's walk-in closet. For what? It saved the HVAC man time. He didn't want to work around these so-called barriers even though it was still technically possible to do so at point. We asked him to change them upfront, we even drew alternative diagrams on the floor where floor vents could have gone. But no, he didn't want to do it that way and he didn't. He balked. He WON. Now, we could have torn things out and started over but who wants to do that, given all the drywall work and painting that had already been done? We reluctantly decided NOT to fix these things even though our General Contractor said that he would take care of it for us...thank you, Bob...it just wasn't the astute thing to do at this late date. Dr. Ellen calls it a 'manly' thing – a thing that male idiots like the HVAC guy like to pull just because, you know? He is exerting his, um, authority even though Lesley and Dr. Ellen could walk circles around him. This is the same guy who installed a dual-fuel HVAC system despite the fact that we wanted an all-propane system. He ended up eating a fair amount of the cost of that, too. Nope, he is not going to get any KUDOS from us, that's for sure. Admirers we are not. 'Nemesis' by the way is generally a term used to describe one's worst enemy. |
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