Sweet, sweet, progress.
After months and months of permit process and weeks and weeks of contractor confusion we’re finally seeing a hint of a barely imagined beginning to something remotely resembling the start of what may, one day, if the stars all align and the gods smile benignly, actually become a house.
True to their word, the new contractor began driving pilings on Thursday. By Friday, when I brought them lunch, I was excited because they’d driven about a third of the pilings.
But all is not rivers of frothy malted beverage just yet. When I timidly asked the new piling contractor when he thought he’d be done so I can schedule material delivery and start date for the framing contractor, he snarled- this is the LAST Carolina house I’m doing.
uh oh. THAT doesn’t sound like warm puppie happiness.
Turns out pile driving is normally a fairly simple and sloppy way to make lots of money. At $100 a piling he can usually drive telephone pole pilings in fairly close to where they’re supposed to be leaving the framing contractor to compensate for the sloppiness by cantilevering the house girders out from the piling line.
Not so in Carolina. In Carolina the pilings are 8×8’s that have to be precisely installed plum, level, and true, because they ARE the outside corners of the house. It’s a lot more work and a LOT more attention to detail.
I’m installing ONE piling an HOUR. YOU do the math, he hissed at me.
So I counted on my fingers and figured if he worked all weekend, he’d be done Monday.
But I didn’t tell HIM that.
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