Tearing it all Apart

Craig DeWitt Headshot

It has been an interesting week. I've now made five visits to the house with the wet floor that I mentioned two weeks ago. The scope of work has extended to other parts of the house. We keep tearing things apart and getting more subs involved. This week they moved two outside AC units about 10 feet from the house and hooked them back up so the homeowners could stay comfortable while repair work progressed. Now we have better access to a wall outside this room. Rock work has come off, slate floors have come up, ceilings have come down. It's getting intense. And the homeowners are even unhappier. But I think we are at the root of the problem and can start repairs.

Sometimes you have to experience first-hand what you end up writing in reports. We have an old building on our property that had a very rough concrete floor. I rented a grinder last weekend to smooth it and take off some surface contamination. Well, rather than a two-day job, its turned into a week's worth. This slab had never even been floated. We even ground off foot imprints. Well, most of them came out. Now they look kind of like petrified dinosaur tracks.

I have gotten to seriously dislike concrete work. I got blown off a ladder on the end of a pump truck hose one time when the operator tried to clear a jam. (No, I didn't land on my head. But an almost-new car got hosed down with wet concrete.) But that's a whole 'nother story. So I dislike concrete work anymore. And this grinding job reminded me why. Genia, I concur, grinding isn't something I want to do again. Anyway, the floor is now much better, and the grinder went back today. And now when I write in a report that the slab wasn't ground properly, I can sympathize a little more.

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