the best laid plans, with lemons into lemonade

This is the somewhat ironic story of how we became the proud owners of 5 cubes of brick, and a whole lot of sand. Plenty of materials just sitting in our yard to make some good use of it in the apocalypse. But let us back up first, shall we? Because first, we thought we’d give you a little history.

When we first moved into this house, the pool looked like this. Good times. 

Looking back at this photo circa 2016, I still don’t really remember what I was thinking. I’m pretty sure I blacked out for the next 18 months and went to a happy place in my brain. 

And if you remember from our latest addition this fall, we took it from this…

To this.

This was stage four of our renovation– after the main living areas, basement, and outside overhaul.

After stage 4, we’re looking at adding on a master suite. {In the future since things are so uncertain right now – Wheee!} But the projects here really have been never ending to bring this house back up to modern day.

And it’s been worth every moment. We love it here.

 
In the meantime, there’s the yard. This yard is filled with possibilities. We just haven’t touched it yet.

We’ve covered this before, but our house actually sits on an acre lot. Below is an overhead from circa 1983…

And this is when our fence was brand new circa 2006. Only 4 years younger than our marriage.

Needless to say, it’s now falling apart. Just the fence. Not the marriage.

Though quarantine is making us a little crazy…

So we’ve been excited to accomplish a little bit around here since we’re ‘stuck’ {safe} anyway. 

The yard has been so neglected and left to its own devices, it needs a little work. We have a long list of fun things we plan to tackle. We’ve restored the pool with a new liner and pump, along with an added heater over time. And of course we built the handmade hideaway for the kids – which they have loved. 

But back to the story part.

Because this is the story of how we turned sketchy lemons into fabulous lemonade.

Last fall, when we were finishing up the outside of the addition, we worked with a brick subcontractor. We work with a lot of people since we take on design for others in this area, and we vet them all. Unfortunately, the wait for our usual brick sub was longer than we could wait. We hired one on the recommendation of a trusted source.

At first, he was great, responsive and ready to work. We were headed out of town and he even assured us he’d be wrapped up when we returned. Of course it didn’t end that way. The supplies hadn’t even been delivered when we came back into town. We’ve also now officially experienced enough hiccups in the construction business, to say we weren’t shocked.

When the work finally started, the workers were awesome, but their boss was absent for the entire project. Something felt a little off. In the end, we found out his lack of investment lead to dishonesty. When the workers were finished with the work, we had extra brick and sand left over.

A lot of brick and sand. 5 1/2 cubes of brick, half a pallet of mortar and about 2 tons of sand. Enough brick and sand to make us realize he’d ordered for a fourth wall, and forgot we only needed three. Whoopsie.

When we asked for an itemized bill, he refused. He just said he ordered ‘extra’.

When we asked him to return the items and take that amount off the bill, we thought it would be a fair solution since the items were unused and he clearly ordered too much. But he decided to charge us for his mistake, even though according to him, it was normal overage. Thus his refusal to provide an itemized bill. Round and round we go…

Alright, that’s fine. Guy is shady. It happens, we reasoned. We just wanted to pay our bill and move on, and for sketchy guy to go away, because we’d decided to make lemonade out of lemons.

We couldn’t get him to admit that he ordered too much and that we paid {well over the quoted amount} for it, but we would at least extend our porch in the back if we were going to be stuck with more materials. We’re on septic, which limits us with codes. The addition, for instance, even had to be built in a certain way, because we can only come so close to our septic tank with permanent structures. Bricks {or pavers of some sort} are perfect, because it’s not considered permanent. At least we now had materials for that, next spring. {Which is now.}

Only the contractor now said he was coming back for his brick because he didn’t order too much… the brickyard sent too much. 

Excuse me? 

“Yeah. I’m just going to come back and pick it up.” 

It appeared to us that someone wanted to double dip. We would pay for the brick, and he would also take the brick back for a refund. Said subcontractor had been in no rush when we tried to get him to take the brick back. And so it sat for over 30 days in the middle of our driveway. Waiting.

I guess you can maybe imagine what happened next? Maybe not? Because we decided to take matters into our own hands. It was definitely ours. What’s that quote about possession being nine-tenths of the law?

And LIARS BURNING IN HELL?

Wow that escalated quickly. Back to the story…

One Saturday morning we went outside with our kids, and cut the straps. We moved all the brick by hand so it was finally out of the way. With five of us, it only took a few hours. And also, child labor is fine because it builds character and maybe they won’t grow up to be like that brick guy. It wasn’t going to sit in our driveway anymore blocking our parking and doorway, and we were going to make the best out of a bad situation. We thought we’d never heard from the guy again. Yay! Happy endings! Cue the porch in the Spring!

Little did we know it would be used at the perfect time, in the middle of the apocalypse.

But rewind. And now fast forward a few weeks later that same fall. Just weeks after we triumphantly cut the bricks and moved them out of our way. I was getting ready to go to coffee with a friend when the eighteen wheeler pulled up in front of our house and enter, stage left, the brick guy’s lackey. He wandered around our driveway for a few minutes like…

 

When he spied said brick in the back, {yeah, he totally snooped on our property for a minute while I hid inside and watched, because I don’t do confrontation, I just do passive aggressive} he promptly got into his giant eighteen wheeler with a giant NOPE and left.

A few days later, the brick guy called Jamin to ask about the brick, Jamin politely told him he could have it all, he’d just have to load it by hand. 

Moving all that brick by hand is no longer worth the labor once the straps are cut. So, that’s the story of how we got ripped off, but ultimately won.  

Kind of.

And that leads us to now… about a week ago after a walk and feeling kinda restless, we marked off our area {we’re super high tech with our spray paint}.

And we got to work.

We have plans to remove this {rotting} fence in the future, since things are uncertain right now and expand a new one to cover the property. We’ll cover all that in our next post, if you’re not already drooling from boredom. But in the meantime we thought we may as well work with the materials we already had. 

We also plan to cover that horrible pump {we have no idea why the old owner decided to put it front and center, but it can’t be moved} and if you’ve been following us on stories where we’ve been sharing our daily progress, then you know we’ve been hard at work while we have all this time on our hands. Laying sod and brick makes for a great workout, guys.

For the record, I don’t feel like we got off easy with this one. It’s been hard work. At one point I deliriously looked at Jamin, and said “Why didn’t we do concrete again?”

Brick laying also causes amnesia regarding septic codes. 

So here’s to making something good out of a bad situation. In more ways than one.

Stay tuned, because we plan to share more soon. And in the meantime, take in a little of those outdoors too, because we hope it’s warming up for you in your area. 

We shared this little robin’s nest from our porch in our stories the other day, and a friend thought it was a baby announcement.

I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

NOPE. 

We can’t wait to share what’s next. 
Have an inspired day!