It’s too bad we couldn’t have anticipated this. At the end of our excavation, we were considering putting in a rock wall in the back yard, as it would be much easier and less expensive to do it before the house gets in the way. Our excavator said it would take all weekend though, and if we tried to do that, we wouldn’t make our goal of making the site available for the foundation guy on Saturday.
My foundation guy disappeared on Monday. He had warned me that one of his workers was having a baby soon, and that could have an effect on his delivery; still, I became increasingly uncomfortable about his failure to return my calls. By Thursday, with no contact of any kind (despite several voicemails); I was frustrated and concerned. Did my foundation guy DIE? If not, when will he come back?
This was particularly a big comedown from the panic and excitement of the previous week, when we had been in an insane hurry trying to get everything set up so the foundation guy could come in. Going from that level of activity to a dead stop, with the perceived threat of dropping temperatures stopping us for the winter.
Now, I’m sure there are ways of overcoming the winter, but I also confident that they are not excellent answers, and that they cost a lot. Also, I have pressure in the form of a 1-year construction limit from the homeowners association.
Finally, I got word that recent violent winds had damaged his other project, and he had to wait for an insurance adjustor, and also perform some rework that would mean that he wouldn’t be able to come back to my project until Tuesday after Thanksgiving. (another week and a half)
My trust in my foundation person was shaken; this was a terrible setback, and with the weather, what other consequences would it have? I considered my options closely. Should I try to get someone else in, who could actually deliver? What other resources were available to me? What were the cost and time implications for those alternatives?
A call to my UBuildit rep was unhelpful. They didn’t have any alternatives; at this time, this is their only ICF contractor. It seemed that God wanted me to work on my patience and trust some more. “Unless the LORD builds the house, the laborers labor in vain.” I resigned myself to His timeline, trusting that He would take care of things, even if it wasn’t the way I would have preferred.
Just in time; the foundation guy called back to tell me it was worse than previously projected, he wouldn’t be able to come back until the first week of December. He also pointed out that I shouldn’t be blaming him for the delays, as they were things beyond his control. He did concede that it was poor of him to fail to communicate for so long, but pointed out that I had provided my share of trouble to the project. He hadn’t been getting project schedule information he wanted, the excavator had failed to remove his equipment, and the markings that I had laid out for where the house was supposed to go were incorrect, requiring him to reset half a day’s worth of work.
That’s when the framing guy was supposed to come. If the the framing guy had to delay a week waiting for the foundation guy to get the foundations laid, would he move on to another job, rather than waste time being unbillable? Fortunately God had given me peace and faith, and I had finally gotten around to accepting them.
HE will provide for us, and build our house.
Praise the LORD!
For the last month or so, I have been praying:
“Lord, as in the days of Elijah, when he prayed for rain, and You drenched the land, pour out your blessings on our land. We don’t need precipitation, but we do need help with our building. After Elijah had prayed, You gave him strength to run down the moutain faster than the king’s chariot, proclaiming Your power and might. In the same way, may our building project glorify Your Name, so that all that look at it know that YOU were the power behind it.
The run down the mountain has begun.