Saturday, April 28, 2007

Update 4/28/07



Okay -

Lease is signed!!! That was about a week ago. Since I have such awesome abilities as a real estate mogul (not!) My lease term does not start until construction is complete and my doors our open. Not that I would want to, but I could take a year to finish the remodel.

Engineers!
I signed an agreeement with my architect to put together my planset to go to the county for our building permit before spring break. He would manage the engineers and get the drawings done. Due to our high growth in NM, I am still trying to get my planset completed and my building permit!

CONCRETE!!!
The architect (also my landlord) gave me some good advice. Let a professional contractor cut, break and haul off the concrete we need to remove for my plumbing. I got the quote, did some figuring and decided we could do it cheaper renting the equipment and using some punk a$$ kids to do the dirty work. I never thought it was going to be easy, but it turned out to be almost impossible. The advice from my landlord/architect was missing one vital peice of information...the concrete was 5000 psi (3000 psi is considered hard to work with) and had a nylon mesh inside of it to help it keep from cracking in the case of an EARTHQUAKE or other natural disaster.

Normal concrete blades were vitually ineffective and the jackhammer wouldn't break it up. Other times that I have busted up 'crete, once you get it started, you can break it up and haul it off in fairly big peices...we basically had to turn this into small rocks since it had the mesh to hold it together.
Long story short, after a FULL day of work, we have 90% of the concrete cut and about two wheelbarrels broken out. I returned the rental equipment, and I will have the pros come in to finish our handiwork. On the positive side, I don't think I will be paying more than the original quote, we were able to cut it quite a bit cheaper than they would have...


Kaelin thought it was pretty loud!












More later! J