Finally some mud is poured

The most aggravating thing about being a contractor is trying to find reliable people. I guess that in that regard it is like running any other business, but somehow I expected it to be better than hiring individuals. When I ran my plant nursery in Florida I always had a tough time finding and keeping help but I was paying only barely over minimum wage and finding reliable and trainable people who want to work for low wages is never easy. In this case, supposedly the subcontractors I am hiring are business people who are running their businesses to make money and as such I would expect that most or many or at least some of them would return phone calls, show up when they promise, and do the job they are being paid to do. That doesn't sound like too much to ask does it?

My basement walls were installed in April (see a previous blog entry about that experience). A few weeks prior to that I had found a framing contractor who had built a house for a neighbor and had done what appeared to be a great job.  The neighbor could not say enough good things about the guy, so I called him and arranged a meeting. We got together and talked about my job and he left with a set of  my plans promising to call me with a framing bid by the end of the week. The week went by, then the weekend, and sometime in the middle of the next week I called him back and he told me he had not had time, had lots of jobs going, would get it done soon, blah, blah, blah. This was to become a common song and dance. A week or so later I called him again and got a similar story. After a third call I decided to look elsewhere for a framer; he never did get me that bid and as far as I know, he still has my set of plans.

While I was looking at the neighbor's house I also noticed what a nice job someone had done forming and finishing his concrete sidewalks, so I got the subcontractor's name and number. The same guy had been recommended to me by another general contractor so I thought this might be a good place to start. I called him and he said he was very busy but would fit my little job (about a 25 yard pouring my basement slab) into his schedule with no problem, just give him a call a week  or so before I was ready. I emailed him a set of plans and called him as he had requested when I was about ready. He finally got back to me about a week later and said he could come out to my job site in about a week. By then my basement walls were done and I was anxious to get on with the show. I had to call him a couple more times and he finally agreed to a meeting and he actually showed up. We walked around with a set of plans for about an hour and discussed how to attack the job; this was on a Thursday and he said that he could form and pour it the next week. The next week came and went and he again failed to return my calls. By then it was the end of yet another week with no progress and I was getting frustrated. While I was playing telephone tag with this guy I got a couple more leads and got three more bids from other concrete subs. Two were within a couple of hundred dollars of each other and the other one was about $2000 more for some reason. I decided to go with the guy who was based out of Chapel Hill; the other guy was from Raleigh, which is about 35 miles away.




It was a good weekend; I was finally going to get the job done, a month late but done nonetheless. His price was for labor only so I picked up two 48" x 100' rolls of 6" wire mesh, #4 rebar, 6 mil poly, and anchor bolts. He would bring the tie wire and the chairs that hold the rebar up off the ground, order the concrete (and get me his discounted price), and most importantly, his crew. His crew came out and leveled the stone that was in place, measured and formed the slab, put down the poly, mesh, and rebar and got ready for the next day's pour. It turned out that when the Superior walls crew had run their plate vibrator over the 1/4' stone base that those walls were to rest on, they had reduced the base height by nearly an inch. That meant that the 3/4" stone base that was to be under the slab was also an inch too high and all of that material had to be removed to maintain the correct final surface height. It was so hot that day that I allowed the contractor to use my skid steer to do the job and he completed it in about a half hour.

So when his guys rolled in to do the pour on May 31st it became clear that after a six week break, we were finally back in action. The whole job went smoothly. Temperatures were in the mid 90s and it was miserable out but the concrete finishers did a good job for the most part and now we can move on with framing, the part of this job that will make this concrete-lined hole in the ground into something with more resemblance to a house.