Friday, April 23, 2004
Contract Cancelled
Ok, so you guys have been watching me see a few little items here and there go up in price right...? Well, sometimes one can only take so much ^^&%&*%*&^%& so today, with the 2nd floor almost complete, I decided to cancel the contract with the General Contractor... WHAT ? After 9 months of waiting for this guy you just up and fire him ! Well so so.... yesterday I dropped into town to check up on the place and to review some of the latest bills with the contractor. (Now remember he is supposed to get quotes in advance, review them with "ME" and after approval go ahead with the issuing of the sub-contract). So he hands me an invoice for the demolition costs and excavation costs.... I had been waiting to see how much money I saved from the 7K estimate since I managed to get our neighbour to take the old house. I.E. Just try and charge me for taking apart a house that isn't there I thought... Well son of a bitch did just that. Said it was going to cost me 17K (YES THAT'S $17,000) for digging a hole in the ground and filling it with some rock........I friggin freaked out on the spot. My contractor then went on to tell me the cost were for hauling away the old foundation, as well as getting rock and sand for the new foundation (No Concrete though..).SO after about 30 minutes of blasting this guy he finally came out and said look I'll give you $2,000 off of my "Contractor Fees"...... Now an increase in price of 10K for something I thought was going to decrease and then a gesture of good will on his part to give me $2,000 out of the goodness of his heart, rang alarm bells as loud as big Ben ! So I continued to tell this guy that something was wrong here and that he had to go back to the people who were charging him and correct the problem.... Somewhere, someone had screwed up big time...... He said he would do just that..... Feeling uncomfortable with the situation I decided to pull out one of those seldom used clauses in the Canadian Consumer Protection Act . Section 59 is the cancellation clause with a sample cancellation agreement on page 91 of 110. (I can't believe the document the government expects the average consumer to go through to find out this stuff.......) I was nice enough to also supply my contractor with a 2 page "if you do these things" I'll reconsider signing a NEW contract... The really strange thing about this contractor was that until yesterday we were operating without any signed contracts. We had a well documented 9 months of intense review of virtually every conceivable item yet when it came time to finalize the contract he had been slow in providing updates and amendments so I didn't sign until yesterday.
Yup, that's right, I cancelled it today, less than 24 hrs later......So the Fax has been sent and a follow-up registered letter will be in the mail tomorrow.
START OF LOAD RESTRICTION PERIOD FOR HEAVY VEHICLES
Now here we were sitting at home trying to figure out how everything we were doing has somehow doubled in price from our initial estimates....The contractor just kept telling me that the house I had selected had changed and it was bigger...... When talking to Mom and she mentioned how small one of the loads of sand they were dumping was from one of the trucks......"Bingo" Way to go AG ! That's it !. Every spring the Gov't puts in place load restrictions for the spring thaw . Well look at that, the load restrictions were imposed one day before construction started......and my contractor, come to think of it did mention that he was going to delay the filling process as the load restrictions were in effect.... He somehow forgot to mention that they had always been in effect and we were paying for half loads to be delivered......
360 Pictures
Ok you know how I like pushing the envelop so try out this really cool 360 degree view. Download these 1.5 and 2 MB files and you can view a 360 degree panorama of the fist and second floors of our new home.
Before proceeding Right click on the link you would like to see, and select "save target as". Pick a file name of your choosing as select desktop to save it to desktop....
1st Floor
2nd Floor
I have a slow update link so be patient...
If you are using MS windows XP it in many cases has the apple quicktime viewer installed....Otherwise after uploading the files, you'll need something like apples QuickTime viewer to view these .mov files.
Left click on the item after downloading
....
After loading you need to click on the window (Hold the left mouse button down) and drag across the screen to take in the 360 deg panorama.
Enjoy !
Ok, so you guys have been watching me see a few little items here and there go up in price right...? Well, sometimes one can only take so much ^^&%&*%*&^%& so today, with the 2nd floor almost complete, I decided to cancel the contract with the General Contractor... WHAT ? After 9 months of waiting for this guy you just up and fire him ! Well so so.... yesterday I dropped into town to check up on the place and to review some of the latest bills with the contractor. (Now remember he is supposed to get quotes in advance, review them with "ME" and after approval go ahead with the issuing of the sub-contract). So he hands me an invoice for the demolition costs and excavation costs.... I had been waiting to see how much money I saved from the 7K estimate since I managed to get our neighbour to take the old house. I.E. Just try and charge me for taking apart a house that isn't there I thought... Well son of a bitch did just that. Said it was going to cost me 17K (YES THAT'S $17,000) for digging a hole in the ground and filling it with some rock........I friggin freaked out on the spot. My contractor then went on to tell me the cost were for hauling away the old foundation, as well as getting rock and sand for the new foundation (No Concrete though..).SO after about 30 minutes of blasting this guy he finally came out and said look I'll give you $2,000 off of my "Contractor Fees"...... Now an increase in price of 10K for something I thought was going to decrease and then a gesture of good will on his part to give me $2,000 out of the goodness of his heart, rang alarm bells as loud as big Ben ! So I continued to tell this guy that something was wrong here and that he had to go back to the people who were charging him and correct the problem.... Somewhere, someone had screwed up big time...... He said he would do just that..... Feeling uncomfortable with the situation I decided to pull out one of those seldom used clauses in the Canadian Consumer Protection Act . Section 59 is the cancellation clause with a sample cancellation agreement on page 91 of 110. (I can't believe the document the government expects the average consumer to go through to find out this stuff.......) I was nice enough to also supply my contractor with a 2 page "if you do these things" I'll reconsider signing a NEW contract... The really strange thing about this contractor was that until yesterday we were operating without any signed contracts. We had a well documented 9 months of intense review of virtually every conceivable item yet when it came time to finalize the contract he had been slow in providing updates and amendments so I didn't sign until yesterday.
Yup, that's right, I cancelled it today, less than 24 hrs later......So the Fax has been sent and a follow-up registered letter will be in the mail tomorrow.
START OF LOAD RESTRICTION PERIOD FOR HEAVY VEHICLES
Now here we were sitting at home trying to figure out how everything we were doing has somehow doubled in price from our initial estimates....The contractor just kept telling me that the house I had selected had changed and it was bigger...... When talking to Mom and she mentioned how small one of the loads of sand they were dumping was from one of the trucks......"Bingo" Way to go AG ! That's it !. Every spring the Gov't puts in place load restrictions for the spring thaw . Well look at that, the load restrictions were imposed one day before construction started......and my contractor, come to think of it did mention that he was going to delay the filling process as the load restrictions were in effect.... He somehow forgot to mention that they had always been in effect and we were paying for half loads to be delivered......
360 Pictures
Ok you know how I like pushing the envelop so try out this really cool 360 degree view. Download these 1.5 and 2 MB files and you can view a 360 degree panorama of the fist and second floors of our new home.
Before proceeding Right click on the link you would like to see, and select "save target as". Pick a file name of your choosing as select desktop to save it to desktop....
1st Floor
2nd Floor
I have a slow update link so be patient...
If you are using MS windows XP it in many cases has the apple quicktime viewer installed....Otherwise after uploading the files, you'll need something like apples QuickTime viewer to view these .mov files.
Left click on the item after downloading
....
After loading you need to click on the window (Hold the left mouse button down) and drag across the screen to take in the 360 deg panorama.
Enjoy !
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