2023 June blog by Chuck Peek: But First!
You know that expression, to make a long story short. Usually by the time anyone uses that expression it is already way too late. So, be aware, there may be way more to my story than you want to hear, and if you like, just cut to the bottom line—we are learning to stay calm.
This is especially true for a few family members and nearby friends who have already followed the heart of this saga, one who reminded us—if you pray for patience, God will not give you patience; instead, you get situations that try your patience. That’s the only way any patience ever develops.
Anyway, you have been warned: Forge ahead only if you have the time and inclination.
To start with, the occasion for our current troubles—we smelled mold in the basement when we were bringing up our holiday decorations last December.
Who deals with mold? I asked. Golden Chariot* someone replied, so I called them.
Golden Chariot said, you bet, you’ve called the right place all right, we can take care of that. But first! First talk to some foundation repair folks because some of the mold came from a leaky foundation.
We’ve known for a long time we had a leaky foundation—and so did our house!
One time, years ago, when we were away and got a torrential rain, the house sitter called and reported we had six inches of water in the basement. He helped retrieve some of our stuff before it was permanently damaged, and by the next day the water was almost all gone. I called our plumber at the time, and told him I didn’t know our basement floor had a drain. There’s possibly not a lot of occasions in their work that causes plumbers to laugh. My comment brought more than a chuckle.
You don’t have a drain, he more than chuckled—the water left the same way it got in, a leaky foundation.
A call to secure foundation repair was far overdue. Who does that kind of work hereabouts? A good friend and neighbor said he’d had good work done by Takes a Beating Foundations, so I called Takes a Beating.*
Takes a Beating said, you bet, you’ve called the right place, we can take care of that.
But first! First, that old tile on the floors of three of the basement rooms is undoubtedly asbestos. First talk to some asbestos removal people…we won’t come until the asbestos is removed.
So, I asked, who takes care of asbestos around here? A quick Google and we find Prairie Hills Asbestos*, run by a couple we knew briefly years ago and known all over the area.
When we gave them a call, they said, you bet, you’ve called the right place, we can take care of that.
But first! Both the mold and the asbestos run behind the long sink counter at the end of the main room and the foundation repair will require access to that exterior wall anyway. We can’t get to removing the asbestos until you get that sink and counter off the wall. First thing, you need to get hold of a plumber.
Well, ours had retired some years ago, we’ve had several plumbers since, but really like everything about the work of one of them except that he is hard to get hold of. Hard but not impossible if you keep at it, and we got hold of him. When he answered our call, he said right away, you bet, you’ve called the right place, I can take care of that. And at last, there was no But First!
He gave it a quick once-over that day and then came back and made quick work of getting the plumbing disconnected to the sink and the counter out from the wall so he could run a new line to where the old line serviced our soft-water.
We were pretty well set, when the “But First” finally came into play. The plumber plumbs, he doesn’t remove counters and sinks from the basement. Another good friend and neighbor used to run a handy-man outfit, and he and an old associate of his came over and carried lots of loads out of the basement—the sink, the counter, some old lumber that had been there even when we bought the house, and everything left that had been too heavy for Nancy and I to carry out ourselves.
Our porch and deck began to look like the Beverly Hillbillies had moved in.
Now, all the But Firsts were now out of the way. Right? We could forge ahead, and forge we did
Golden Chariot came and cleared out all the mold and stripped out lots of dry-wall (not quite enough as it would befall, but who knew!
Prairie Hills Asbestos came and took up all (as it seemed at the time) of the asbestos and mastic,
A front man for Takes a Beating made a quick stop to see if we were ready for them and allowed as how we were indeed ready for them to do the job, and a date was set.
On the scheduled date, a Takes a Beating team arrived and set to work. . . for two hours when they discovered that Golden Chariot had apparently assumed the framing on three walls came first and the asbestos tile then was laid up to the framing. Nope! The framing was built on top of the tile.
So, Takes a Beating had “no alternative” but to leave as soon as they had removed the framing that revealed the offending rim of asbestos around the room.
We called Prairie Hills Asbestos and they squeezed into their schedule another visit to remove the offending tiles and mastic, and I let Takes a Beating know we were now ready.
Takes a Beating made an appointment for quite a number of weeks out, but had a cancellation so they were able to get to it earlier, and back came their crew . . .Who weren’t here even an hour before they said, there was still asbestos showing around the rim of one of the rooms.
This might have been a great moment for the patience to kick in, but now I’m, well, a bit miffed. Peeved. Upset. I made a quick call to Prairie Hills Asbestos, who thought they could catch a team before they left town to come take a look while Takes a Beating was still here to point out the problem.
That’s when the real fun began–the big argument that ensued when the asbestos removal crew arrived and insisted that the residue around the rim was just moisture and the Takes a Beating crew insisted that the residue was asbestos, Adding to the merriment, one crew was all white, one all Latino. A factor? I can’t tell. But both crews were highly offended that their professional judgment was, shall we say, in dispute.
I suggested that Takes a Beating take a long coffee break, and come back, since, even if it was asbestos, the asbestos removal team were ready to take care of it right then, and Takes a Beating could still get in the better part of a day. But rather than wait, the Takes a Beating team left and indicated when they might be able to return.
Meanwhile, there came a sign! The manager of the asbestos business called the inspector to come decide the issue: was there still asbestos or was it just moisture? No one likes to be wrong, but clearly one of these crews was wrong. I liked them both, personally, and didn’t have the knowledge to choose who was right and who was wrong. That’s the inspector’s job and he did his job; he came while Prairie Hills Asbestos crew was still here, pronounced that the asbestos folks had been right, nothing around the rim of the room was asbestos related in any way and added that the Takes a Beating team should know that the most dangerous thing ahead of them was silica from the cement in the floor as they jack-hammered their trench!!!
By this time, however, the earliest Takes a Beating could get us back on their schedule would occur while we had long-standing plans to be out of town.
We gave them two choices. One, we could arrange for someone to be present to let them in, then come back to check them out at the end of the day and lock the place up. Unless, possibly, some other owner would like to move their job up a week and we could move ours back until we were back home.
It ended up that both we and they were fine for us to be gone as long as someone could be here, and one of our good neighbors thought their oldest son would be glad to be here each day in our place. Takes a Beating came, finished the work, and our neighbor’s boy locked up each day and gave the company their check on the last day.
I think both the company and we were glad not to be here—that little embarrassment about having been wrong to leave those weeks back when it turned out that the asbestos wasn’t asbestos! We came back to town to find the whole job finished.
Did I say “Finished?” Not quite. Finished, “but first”—the completion of their work left two things yet to do with the suggestion of a third.
First, the Takes a Beating crew suggested our eaves troughs and gutters could take a looking at. Second, they left three cords and outlets, no longer connected to the wall that was no longer there, and the cords and outlets were on the floor. And lastly, the wall where they wanted to mount the controls for the new sump pump was too “crumbly” to mount, so the monitor and the scads of volts battery were also still on the floor by the pump. I found a little cart I could station there, laid the monitor on the cart, and then found the battery to heavy and too “slick” to lift high enough to get it on the cart shelf. I figured that out when I dropped the battery on my foot and decided not to do that twice.
Now if your original problem was in part a leaky basement, having cords, outlets, monitors, and battery on the floor didn’t seem like a good idea to me.
And maybe not connected to the project but, if not, then it’s uncanny that the basement mop sink drain pipe now links like a sieve when it didn’t before.
So, we are finished…But First! I installed a couple of hooks and wrapped the cords and outlets around them so they were up off the floor, then called the electrician who couldn’t come because he’s backlogged for some time—and then came two days later and removed the excess cords and outlets and routed their leads into a junction box…and, just because they are nice, the two guys got the sump pump the enormous battery up on a platform, apparently without either of them dropping it on one or the other’s feet.
The plumber…did I mention he’s hard to get hold of…has a voice mail to come fix the drain pipe on the mop sink.
And our good friend Matt Park came by with ladders and hoses and cleared out our eave’s troughs and gutters, all before the three of us completely resolved the whole Russia/Ukraine problem just sitting on our porch.
And I have a mid-July appointment with a podiatrist to look at the knot on the instep of my foot.
But, here is the quandary I’m left with. I suspect that Golden Chariot and Prairie Hills and Takes a Beating are all good companies, their crews good workers who take pride in their judgment and work. I liked them all and tipped most of them for coming on time and cleaning up after their work was done.
But First—since we seem to work on a series of “But Firsts”—wouldn’t you think on a multiple contractor job it would save all the contractors time and money if they communicated with each other instead of saddling a homeowner with decisions on which the contractors should know a lot more than the owner? In this case, a ten-minute walk through by someone from each crew would have saved all of them time and money later on.
That would certainly benefit the homeowner, in this case us. Although, true enough, had they done that we would have been deprived of the great “Is It Asbestos Or Is It Not” war between the two crews. Maybe, even if they coordinated their work, they could stage a mock battle for the owner’s entertainment. Having a little experience in theater, I’d be happy to help them stage the whole thing. They could practice in our basement.
Meanwhile, there has been this further benefit: to even get started with all this, we needed to clear out over half the stuff that was in the basement, and thus inspired, we went on to also clear out half of what was in the almost 40 years of accumulation in the garage.
We set it out on the parking by the curb one category at a time (tools, electrical, frames, cabinets, binders, etc.), and overnight all but a couple of small boxes and one cabinet went to what we can only suppose are good homes. And no one took any of the tables or shelves until most of the stuff on them was already taken!
Our porch no longer looks like the Beverly Hillbillies moved in, we are living lighter—and drier, and our furnace people are scheduled to come check out the HVAC after all the dust and confusion.
They just said they’d come, without any “But First!”
Got to run now and leave a second voice mail with the plumber… and make a note to self not to use the mop sink until he comes.
*The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Any resemblance to any crews living or dead is purely accidental. [All of which is, of course, the least true sentence in any piece of fiction!]
Chuck Peek
Kearney, Nebraska
June 2023
Next blog: probably July—dark money heating up Nebraska politics again, so maybe it will be time for some commentary, although if you want good political commentary, check out the Monday columns by George Ayoub in the Nebraska
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