It's Not All Sunshine and Roses

Well, we do live in San Diego, so there is a lot of sunshine. And despite my neglect, the roses appear to be holding up.

My point is, it's been a stressful week. It doesn't help that I went into tech for The Imaginary Invalid at The Old Globe. For those of you who have no idea what that means, it translates to a 60-hour work week with me getting home past midnight most nights.

Getting home at 12:45 am after a 12-hour day and then having to wake up at 6 the next morning so I can shower and get ready for work before meeting with the contractors to select windows so I can be back at work at 9 makes for a long, exhausting, stressful week.

So, on Friday, when we found out that the engineer changed a window from a slider to a casement and the house got framed before anyone caught it, I was pretty upset.

When Ali designed the house, she had a 4' sliding window in the bedroom. Mommalinda thought the window was way too big, so we made it smaller, not realizing at the time that we'd made it too small to meet egress requirements. When the engineer got the plans, he just changed it to a casement window and didn't tell anybody. And nobody caught it until it came to the window meeting. 

The thing is, neither one of us thinks Mommalinda will be able to operate a casement
window. I think they're beautiful, Jules abhors them because they remind her of living in her crappy apartment in Michigan, but a casement window is not a great solution for a 78-year-old.

After a few freakouts, (first I had one, then Jules had one, then I had one again) we worked it out with Ritz. We made some adjustments in other places - we gave a little, Ritz gave a little, and I think (I hope) that we came up with a solution that is fair to both parties.

One thing we asked Shar was whether we should have had a meeting after the engineers drew up the technical plans. She said no, not really. Most of the stuff the engineers do is so technical that the only thing we would get out of reviewing the plans would be a headache.

Maybe the engineer should have given Ritz the heads-up so they could give us the heads-up, but there are hundreds of details that don't impact us that we don't need to or want to know about, and a few changes that aren't as big a deal.

For example, the plans the designer drew up called for a pocket door into the laundry room. But our house was built in 1960, and the smaller studs and thinner walls don't allow for the necessary framework that a pocket door needs, so one of the engineers changed it to a swing door. Not a big deal. I love a pocket door, but I totally understand why it doesn't work, and my heart will go on without one.

We also needed to shift the door that connects the houses about 18" and create a stub wall to do so. Again, not a big deal, and it gives Mommalinda a little alcove in the kitchen that she can hang towels or a broom on. Its just one of the little details that has to shift when you go from pretty design to engineer gibberish. (No insult to engineers. I appreciate your expensive gibberish.)

So. That's been our week. Sorry there are no pictures; did I mention it's been a busy week?

Next post: Cats do NOT like changes.