Victor giving the project house curb appeal by attending to the overdue fall cleanup
After 2 weeks away in sunny climates I came back to my project house being on track to be two weeks behind schedule.
The contractors gave themselves a little holiday while I was gone and only completed about 25% of their scheduled tasks.
I bet they are all pretty tired tonight as I pulled in the carpenter, the painters, the plumbers, the electricians, the window installers, the HVAC installers and the outside maintenance people. We had about 12 people buzzing around at one point. We made up 25% in one day. It will take another 3 – 4 days of this type of activity to get back on track but it is well worth torchuring them for their slippage.
This seems to be a big issue on Nantucket where most of the contracting work takes place over the winter when residences are empty. The clients are generally elsewhere. Then come spring when clients start scheduling visits, the contractors and subs go crazy trying to wrap projects up.
The way that I generally work is to have one project at a time and to work on it daily until it is completed. My other advantage is that I have the skills to do most of the trades on a project so if I can’t get someone to be there in a timely manner, I will do the work myself. This works great on smaller projects but I do sub things out when time is of the essence. I am usually sorry I did as I seem to have to pick up the slack myself anyway.