Day 1 - March of the Contractors - March 23, 2011

Closing of the house went quickly and smoothly.  First time I've ever gotten a preliminary HUD statement that exactly matched what I had to pay at closing.  I guess I've learned which questions to ask over the years and then ask them again and again to make sure nothing changed.

I got to the house at noon.  Expecting the march of the contractors to start at 2:00 pm.  The first challenge I faced, other than six inches of fresh snow, was the lockbox was gone and I hadn't received a key to the house.  Footprints in the snow which hadn't started to fill in showed I'd missed whoever picked it up by mere minutes.  Called Jeff Feldman who found out the key was duct taped beneath the mailbox.

I'd picked up some of my tools earlier from our storage unit and started hauling them into house.  About 1:00 I realized I need some lunch so I grabbed some Wendy's at the next exit down the interstate.  Of course, the first contractor comes earlier, 1:15 pm, and wants to know where I was.  I rushed back to the house as the march of the contractors started at 1:30 pm with the HVAC.  The flooring refinishers started at 4:00 pm.  No bathroom and no place to sit so it was a long afternoon.

Being relatively new to the Twin Cities area, I wasn't really sure how to go about identifying and selecting contractors.  Robyn and I had been watching HGTV and there was an ad for Angie's List.   I joined and identified 5 or 6 of the highest ranked companies, put together some quote specifications and invited them to a walk-through and bid.

I also got to do my first repair.  I replaced the window in the front door which was shattered.  I didn't get a good before shot.  But here's what I have.

 

View of Front Door from inside

 

In the upper left of this picture of Robyn and Jeff, our realtor, you can see the cracks in the glass

 

Here's the glass I replaced.  That's the square-pointed shovel I got to shovel about 100 foot of sidewalk covered with 6 inches of snow.  With swimsuits now on sale in the store, it's impossible to find a snow shovel.   But don't shovel the snow within 24 hours, you can expect a $300 bill from the City of St. Paul.

 Here's the finished project.  I replaced the tempered glass with plexi-glass until Robyn and I decide what we are going to do with the door long-term.  It will most likely be rehabbed.

Good thing too!!!  This was my first experience cutting plexi-glass.  I didn't have a workbench at the house yet to support this while I broke off the end and I broke the corner off.