I love construction . . . NOT!

You know that scary "what if the tile is not right feeling" I was talking about yesterday? I should sooooo listen to my intuition. They got the right tile patterns, but the store gave them two dye lots of my kitchen tile. That's the same tile, but two different batches. They don't match. Of course. So they have to take out some and go switch lot numbers at the store. This job will be taking longer than expected.

I wonder why construction in general is such an error prone field? It's a sad fact that no one expects a construction job to come in on time, or within budget, but why is that? I can understand someone like me, or any do-it-yourself-er, would need multiple trips to the store and lots of tries because we don't know what tools or supplies we're going to need until we start doing it. But people who do construction for a living? Why wouldn't the store or the tilers confirm how the tile was going to make it to my house? Why wouldn't someone confirm either that different batches of tile matched or that an order contained all one batch? Why does it seem all construction jobs are "get there and see if we have anything we need"?

My place of work is having construction done and it works exactly the same. "We're here to put the walls up so we can put in the UPS." Uhm, no one told us, we need to move the stuff from that area. "Not our problem. We need to do it today." Then they put up a temporary wall that blocked half of the major entry into the lab. When you opened the door into the lab, half the entry was a wall. Which of course couldn't stay that way, so they had to take it down and put it up again differently so people could get in. Probably construction time over-runs occur because so often they have to do things multiple times to get it right. But why is that?

My sister acted as general contractor for a shop she and her husband had built, and discovered that there are two constants in the construction industry. One, you will never have the material you need when the people are ready for it. Two, no one in construction, and no construction job, is ever on time. Being somewhat anal retentive like I am, my poor sister was a nearly a total, hairless (from pulling it out), basket case by the time the shop was built. I will keep her travails firmly in my mind while this house stuff is being done, so I can see how smoothly it's really going. They were dreaming when they told me two days, though. And maybe that's part of the problem. Two days in an ideal perfect world where things work like you would want them to, three to five days in the real world. I'm hoping for somewhere in between perfection and real. I have some things going on at work that I have to be there for. Like a lecture at 8:00 am tomorrow morning. I guess we'll see what kind of creative scheduling the tilers and I can do.

Thanks to lot numbers of tile, and having to take out non-matching tiles, the tilers didn't get very far laying the new tile yesterday. I'm hoping they get farther today. Here's a picture of the piles of old tile fragments before they carted it away and then a picture of the start of the new tile. This is as far as they got, what with having to replace pieces that they had put in. I think I'll be living with my refrigerator in my living room for a few days more.

Yes, this new tile is a very similar color to the tile I had taken out. I didn't change to kitchen tile color much. I changed the color of the carpet quite a bit from my current carpet, and the bathroom tiles will no longer be blue. I liked the color of the tile I had in the kitchen, but I wanted to extend it to the back door and re-grout the whole kitchen. It was easier to replace it all then find a matching tile to extend it. Hmmmmm. Sounds like a rationalization doesn't it? Maybe I just wanted to replace the flooring in my whole house. That reminds me. I need to remind the tilers to extend the tile to the back door. They'll have to take out some carpet there.

The cat-kids spent the day yesterday under my bed, but came out to investigate almost as soon as the door closed behind the tilers yesterday. They seemed mostly fine and very curious about all the goings on once it was just them and me again. I imagine today will be like that too, although they should be less freaked because the noise level will be less. The sound of cutting tiles will be most of the loud noises and the tilers are doing that outside. They will have to break out the old tiles around the toilet in the master bathroom. They left that yesterday so we'd have a working toilet until they replace the tiles and the toilet in the guest bathroom.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the progress today.