2 posts tagged “home renovation”
I came home today to a huge crane in my yard and three concrete trucks lined up down the street. Aaaahhh, the rumble of progress.
This is the first of what I’m sure will be many entries regarding the many phases of our home renovation. After many years, dollars, and hours of agonizing my husband and I decided to start renovating our 25 year-old home.
I’ve entered into this with the most positive attitude I am capable of. After loosing power, telephone, cable, and 10,000 gallons of pool water I was a picture of steely composure, until yesterday.
I live in a restrictive covenant community. That is good in many ways, but I also feel like Big Brother is watching me. Not two days after we broke ground did the complaints start pouring in. Not to me, of course, but to the board president who then has to relay them to me. The problem was, I gave the plans to a board member who didn’t relay any of our building information to anyone else (although the board president had been informed via email 4 months ago that we were planning on remodeling).
I didn’t wait for the board to get back to me. There was a break in the weather and the builders were finally ready after a three week delay. When the board president started getting calls he didn’t even know we had started. He was pretty pissed. It threw up red flags. Even though we did everything per the covenant, we didn’t have prior board approval before we started. It will all be fine in the end. I’ve done everything I can to make sure this isn’t too much of an inconvenience for my neighbors; but renovation is a messy business. I do have to rant, though.
My neighbors are crabby busybodies who need to get a life. I have six friggin’ acres. No roads are being blocked; there aren’t jackhammers going on before 8 AM; they aren’t loosing their power or cable. For them it’s a visual inconvenience.
I have lived through many years of their renovations. They’ve had noisy trucks, port-a-potties in their yards, semi-tractors of bricks blocking the roads for hours. Nobody called me an apologized for the trouble it caused. As far as I’m concerned, it’s payback time!
