Gift of Gab

My husband can strike up a conversation with just about anyone . Until we had started this new house project this " gift " of his , had actually been a little annoying . I couldn't tell you the number of times I've sat , fuming in the car
, waiting for him to wrap up a conversation with a total stranger .
Because neither of us were familiar with codes we decided to sub contract the electric and plumbing . I ran an ad in a local publication , for plumbers and electricians . The response was overwhelming . Construction in this area of the country had dropped off considerably , and a lot of these guys were out of work . Judging from some of the bids we got they wanted to stay that way . It hadn't hit them that the "Boom" was over , and that they were going to have to go back to charging more , "realistic" , prices for their services .
My bid process was pretty simple , I had the contractors come out to the house and as we walked through , I told them what I wanted ,they took notes , and a couple of days later , they would send me their bids . I also used this walk through as a sort of interview . I knew that when it came time to do the actual job , I would be the one on site that they would be talking to , and if they couldn't , or weren't will to communicate with me on a level that I understood then I had no use for them . I had done my homework (thank goodness for the Internet ) and had become somewhat familiar with a lot of the housing industry jargon . I think I might have even impressed my husband a little ...no easy task after almost 25 years of marriage .
Any how after shifting through all the bids , and we had decided on an electrician , I was having trouble deciding on a plumber . We had bids from $10,000 dollars to $4200.00 all of which struck me as ridiculously high . As far as the plumbing went we had a very simple lay out , all the plumbing was on one side of the house in a straight line . Not that much in the way of materials or labor .
So while I'm trying to figure out if , and how , we could do this ourselves , my husband puts his "gift" into action . While stopping to get gas one day at a local convenience store , he had a plumbing company van pull up next to him . Being his normal self he struck up a conversation with the driver . Turned out that drive wasn't the owner of the company just an employee , and because work was really slack at that time his employer didn't mind that his guys did side work ( the company went out of business several months later ). He actually followed my husband home . We walked him through showed him what we needed , he went home worked up a quote and called back with it later that evening . He came in at a little under half of the lowest quote we had gotten . He wasn't licensed ,So we had to get the plumbing permit , but in our county the home owner can do their own plumbing and have who ever they want to assist , as long as they meet the codes . We didn't know the codes , this guy did . That problem solved .
His gift of gab came in handy several more times over the course of building our new house . Just from striking up conversations he found unemployed people in the insulation field , general labors , finish carpenters , painters ,the list goes on . Some we used , some we didn't . So my advise is TALK , to friends, relatives, co-workers , people you run into shopping . With the high unemployment numbers , there are oodles of talented people out there who would be grateful for the work , and you can save yourself a bundle of money . Post ads in local newspapers , community bulletin boards , home improvement stores . Ask for references .

Naive To Say The Least

Call me naïve , for some reason , maybe because I think things should be simple and uncomplicated , I thought all we had to do was go to the permit office, get a building permit , and off we'd go . Wrong , oh so wrong ! Every step of the construction process has a permit involved , and almost every permit has to be obtained from a different department . I don't know about other areas , but Kent County Delaware has an extremely disorganized permit system . . Instead of having all the related departments , located in one building , they are strung out , all over the city of Dover DE , and of course they don't seem to communicate with each other . The proverbial , left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing . So if you're in the Dept. of Natural Resources office (which is where you get a septic and well permit) , and need information ... say , about obtaining a plumbing permit don't bother asking . Further more , every permit has an initial fee , and some have additional inspection fees . Some permits , make no sense at all , we ran into several of these . One was for a highway entrance permit , permission to have a driveway . OK... there had only been a driveway , ( two in fact ) on our lot for over 25 years . The second was an environmental impact permit , this was to determine the impact , that building a house on the lot , would have on the environment . There had also been a house on the lot for over 25 years . We even had to have a demolition permit , to tear down what remained of the more than half burnt old house . I started to argue these permits , but got frustrated and just let it go . I had visions of my paperwork getting shoved to the bottom of the pile . The one permit , that burnt me up the most , was the actual building permit itself . It was close to $4000.00 , and the only thing we got for that ... was permission to build . This fee was for absolutely nothing else , no additional permits , no inspections , nothing . Along with having to have a permit for every stage of construction, every stage has to be inspected and in some cases , you can't move to the next phase , until the previous one has passed inspection. Generally there is a waiting period before the inspections, can be done . If a stage doesn't pass inspection on the first shot and has to be re-inspected, your waiting again . The lesson here is ... before you do anything find out what permits you need , what they cover , and have your check book ready .