November 2007

It's November the 5th and I'm driving to Port Gibson to meet Brian, the carpenter, who is starting work today! I arrive around 7:30a.m. and there are workers EVERYWHERE...the rotten part of the front porch has already been torn out, there are workers on the back porch and on the second story porch. I hired them to tear out and replace all of the rotten wood on the exterior of the house...then...as the day goes on and we are walking through the house he tells me he has a friend that is a painter who does plaster repair and that he's asked him to come and take a look....he also has a friend that's a roofer and he's also coming! This is great after not being able to get workers, but also sounding really expensive. NONE of these workers give estimates...everything is done on an hourly basis.

Danny the painter comes and he tells me that the plaster is not as bad as we thought and that it just needs to be patched, except a few small places, that need to be torn out and sheet rocked. This sounds great, so he starts to work the following day. They do not have the same work ethic as the carpenters and are very slow and making a huge mess. When they get to the living room they discover that this plaster is not holding as it should and that SOME will have to come down and be sheet rocked...it turned out to be the ENTIRE ROOM, walls and ceiling! CHA CHING!

We decided that since the walls were being done that we would go ahead and take up the damaged wood floors that were over the original wood so that we could have a Billiards room by Christmas!

The roofer shows up on the third day and of course he says we need a whole new roof! We decided to start with the tin roof on the back of the house. When they start the job they discover that the previous roofing materials have been stuck down with lots and lots of tar and the removal of all this is going to DOUBLE the price! haha....

By the 15th of the month everything that's getting done at this point is done. After many days of driving to and from Port Gibson and a few tears it's time to start the clean up!