#changeorder

Change Order in Construction: A Complete Guide

Your business needs #Chermeaconstructionsoftware to manage business strategies to grow more. Book appointment, Send Customer Agreement,Send Invoice, Change Order, Issue Credit memo, and receipt manage all with our Software.

https://chermeaconstructionsoftware.com/features

So here we are week 1 and we already have our first change order.  Boo!  As architects we try very hard to anticipate all the things that would be necessary for this renovation in the plans, but when problems are hidden there is no way to know about them.  

Well as soon as our contractor started demo he found our first (and hopefully last) surprise.  There’s a bunch of asbestos filled vinyl floor tile all throughout the house!  Hiding under that awful carpet that I have hated for years!  I take this as the carpet’s final “fuck you” to me for hating it!  And when I say this shit is all throughout the house I mean it - that shit is in the bedrooms too!  WTF - who puts vinyl tile in a bedroom?  Maybe that was the thing to do in the 60′s... but ewww!  

Our contractor had the flooring tested and confirmed that the floor tile is 4% asbestos, and the adhesive holding those suckers down also has 5% asbestos in it!  Damn!  Luckily, those floor tiles are only dangerous when they break apart and turn to dust in the air.  Your want to breath asbestos dust about as much as you want to breath COVID-19 (cue the Mesothelioma Lawyers commercial).  So the good news is that we were safe living there with those tiles hiding under our carpet and wood floors.  The bad news is that due to the hazardous nature of those flooring materials we have to have a special subcontractor remove the tiles, scrape the adhesive off the slab, and paint a chemical agent that neutralizes any remaining molecules still stuck to our concrete slab foundation.  $6,148 extra project contingency dollars later they can start the remediation on Monday 12/7.  

We thought about just leaving the tiles there and putting our new flooring on top of them (like the previous owner did), but because the contractor has to saw cut up our slab to install all new plumbing those tiles have got to go!

Ebenezer Scrooge McBrett wanted to only remove the tiles where they have to cut the slab which would cost only $5k total.  But for my peace of mind and frankly only $1,148 more I want those things all out of my house!  I get that we are not millionaires here and we need to be conscience of our budget because we have a limited contingency (10%)... but hazardous materials have no place in my home!  

I loved this piece from ChangeOrder on collecting, books, physical media, and ownership:

It wasn't always this way. Through most of high school and college, I was able to get by just with the library. When I was in graduate school, however, I would acquire and read 3 to 4 books a week—for work, for pleasure, for class, for my full-time job as an editor. In the mail, I would receive dozens of review copies a month. The bookshelves grew fuller and fuller, and since many books were referred to in class, I had no excuse to get rid of them. It wasn't until a hurricane blew through town and flooded our townhouse's basement—destroying about a hundred of my books—that I felt heartbroken at having to recycle all those books. Giving away or selling books, even since then, has always been a struggle.

One of the reasons I've been resistant to commit fully to ebooks is my love of a full bookshelf. A bookshelf is a window into new worlds but also a mirror, reflecting back to us glimpses of our own lives. I scan the spines on my shelf and am reminded of where I was when I read each book. The bookshelf, possibly more than anything else, is a testament to a life lived.

Cloud services are the grail of the computer industry, and yet they will not rid us of this desires, comforts, and traps of ownership. While I'm now breathing a little easier, now living in a space with a little less stuff, there's a burgeoning world of eBooks and iTV rentals and Rdio.com that continues to make me uncomfortable. My iTunes has reached a point where when I put it on shuffle, songs come up I rarely recognize. These tools are designed to provide me access to more of what I want, almost effortlessly. And yet I just don't trust myself with them.