SlickTony
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- May 25, 2002
- Posts
- 6,344
This all got started because our house had a hole in the roof, had something wrong with the chimney, and needed a new roof and new siding. So we called this outfit that came recommended by a couple I've gone to church with for ten years--they're building contractors, so I figured they'd know who the best roofing and siding people are.
In late August or September, I called the outfit, and after about a week of missed connections, they sent out the guy who actually does the work out to look at our place and give us an estimate. After a bunch of aborted meetings, he finally made it out to our house, and later on that week, he gave us a quote. Which gave my husband such a severe case of sticker shock that we made no decision for upwards of a month, during which time he attempted to get quotes from other people. It's a seller's market down here in Florida. It's very hard to get anybody to come out and give you a quote on a renovation when all the construction people are working hammer and tongs to throw up as many new condos as they possibly can before the housing bubble bursts. Besides, I'd seen some prices on various notices of commencement--I see all these documents in the course of my work--and consulted with our church friends, and it didn't seem out of line to them.
Then one night my cell rang, and out of the blue, it was the guy who'd given us the quote. The call ended, and I called him back, and it turned out that he hadn't meant to call me--he'd been messing around with his phone and I guess you could say it called me. I said to my husband, "It's the 1st Coast guy, what should I tell him?" and he said, "Oh, hell, tell him to come out."
He came to the house, and we told him what we needed done, and drew up a contract. While this was happening, the cats came up and got in his face, but he said it was all right, he liked cats, and cats, dogs and kids tended to like him. After a few days, he came out with this other guy, and they started on the roof. The roof, as I mentioned, had a hole in it, which had allowed water to drip onto the soffit They resided the chimney, and put new shingles on the roof. In the meantime, they have turned my back yard, and sometimes the side yard, into a construction site, with a temporary work table made of sawhorses and plywood. There is a large Ridgid tool box up against the back fence. It's been very interesting and educational, watching them at work.
We have this arrangement. The thing is, this man's official capacity is as a roofer, but his boss thinks well enough of him to let him do siding on the side. This is all very well, except that at any time, someone else's roof trumps our siding, so the siding is not finished yet.
For those of the readership who might wonder what the guy is like, he is a man of middle height, very fit and trim, (nice shoulders!) with round, ingenuous blue eyes. When I talked to him on the phone, I took him for an older man, but when I first met him, I thought, oh, he's young, no more than early 30s. I adjusted my estimate of his age upwards when I saw the gray in his beard and when he told me how long he'd been in the roofing business, which is 30 years. It was in the family. I was able to pinpoint his age more accurately the first time he took off his cap. He and the guys he works with, who change a lot, are quintessential good ol' boys. They listen to country music on the radio when they're at work. The roofer is from Arkansas, and when he wasn't doing child labor for his father, lived an idyllic country life of huntin', fishin', drinking beer and growing dope out in the woods. In short, so different from the way I was raised that he seems kind of exotic, although not as much as my first husband, who was from another country. When I come out to look at what he's done, and take pictures of the process, I find myself flirting with him a little. I don't think a woman should ever get totally out of practice, but that's as far as it goes.
The last weekend he was here, he got the end of the house almost all done, only quitting because the light had gone, although he did work a while after that because he had a headlight. He was supposed to come out this last weekend and finish the end and come around to the front, and replace the kneewall which we'd had to pull off because it had rotted, after which the house would be ready to paint. On Saturday, he called saying that he had to help someone out with a job of theirs, but he'd be there the next day, with reinforcements. Except he wasn't. I called him, and left a message in his voice mail, and usually he's good about calling back, but I didn't hear from him all the rest of the day.
Monday afternoon, the mystery was solved: at 4:45, he called and explained that he hadn't come on Sunday because he spent the weekend in the pokey (his words). Seems that after his last job, he and a bud bought a 6-pack of beer, and had one apiece. And then he was pulled over for not using his signal, and then the cop spotted the two empties in the truck. And he refused the breathalyser test, because he believes them to be inaccurate, insisting on a blood test. So he got busted. His boss had to bail him out, and he withdrew and used every last penny in his bank account to pay his lawyer. Moreover, the week before, he'd quarreled with his girlfriend, who threw him out, so he was living in a hotel on the expressway that has an evil reputation. It--or one of its rooms--was featured in our local free rag as the venue of a meth lab.
So he said he'd knock $200 off his original quote if I'd give him enough money so he could feed his truck and pay his hotel bill and eat and stuff. I found myself agreeing to give him $500, because I know from personal experience how fast $200 melts away when it's all you've got in the world. Except that he asked me to make the check out to a friend, because he didn't have a bank account, because he'd closed out his and couldn't open a new one until he had his ID back--he was driving on a hardship permit so that he could do his job. He thanked me profusely, and I went back to my work, feeling exactly like a woman who's let a man fast-talk her into doing something against her better judgment, and which, for all she knows, could land her ass in trouble.
I left the check under a paint can on my back porch the next morning, and for the next few hours I had daymares about the friend taking the check, cashing it, and lighting out for Ybor City or wherever people light out for in this part of the world, when they've absquatulated with someone else's money. But evidently his friend had proved true, because we spoke later in the day, and he seemed considerably happier, and he's promised to bring at least two other guys and get my house finished this coming weekend.
In the meantime, the weather has been foul, and I'm really starting to wonder if this will get done by Christmas. I'd wanted to put up lights. I'd even had an electrician come out an install a receptacle in the front of the house--which should have been installed when it was built--but I can hardly do this before the siding's all done, now can I?
Feh.
In late August or September, I called the outfit, and after about a week of missed connections, they sent out the guy who actually does the work out to look at our place and give us an estimate. After a bunch of aborted meetings, he finally made it out to our house, and later on that week, he gave us a quote. Which gave my husband such a severe case of sticker shock that we made no decision for upwards of a month, during which time he attempted to get quotes from other people. It's a seller's market down here in Florida. It's very hard to get anybody to come out and give you a quote on a renovation when all the construction people are working hammer and tongs to throw up as many new condos as they possibly can before the housing bubble bursts. Besides, I'd seen some prices on various notices of commencement--I see all these documents in the course of my work--and consulted with our church friends, and it didn't seem out of line to them.
Then one night my cell rang, and out of the blue, it was the guy who'd given us the quote. The call ended, and I called him back, and it turned out that he hadn't meant to call me--he'd been messing around with his phone and I guess you could say it called me. I said to my husband, "It's the 1st Coast guy, what should I tell him?" and he said, "Oh, hell, tell him to come out."
He came to the house, and we told him what we needed done, and drew up a contract. While this was happening, the cats came up and got in his face, but he said it was all right, he liked cats, and cats, dogs and kids tended to like him. After a few days, he came out with this other guy, and they started on the roof. The roof, as I mentioned, had a hole in it, which had allowed water to drip onto the soffit They resided the chimney, and put new shingles on the roof. In the meantime, they have turned my back yard, and sometimes the side yard, into a construction site, with a temporary work table made of sawhorses and plywood. There is a large Ridgid tool box up against the back fence. It's been very interesting and educational, watching them at work.
We have this arrangement. The thing is, this man's official capacity is as a roofer, but his boss thinks well enough of him to let him do siding on the side. This is all very well, except that at any time, someone else's roof trumps our siding, so the siding is not finished yet.
For those of the readership who might wonder what the guy is like, he is a man of middle height, very fit and trim, (nice shoulders!) with round, ingenuous blue eyes. When I talked to him on the phone, I took him for an older man, but when I first met him, I thought, oh, he's young, no more than early 30s. I adjusted my estimate of his age upwards when I saw the gray in his beard and when he told me how long he'd been in the roofing business, which is 30 years. It was in the family. I was able to pinpoint his age more accurately the first time he took off his cap. He and the guys he works with, who change a lot, are quintessential good ol' boys. They listen to country music on the radio when they're at work. The roofer is from Arkansas, and when he wasn't doing child labor for his father, lived an idyllic country life of huntin', fishin', drinking beer and growing dope out in the woods. In short, so different from the way I was raised that he seems kind of exotic, although not as much as my first husband, who was from another country. When I come out to look at what he's done, and take pictures of the process, I find myself flirting with him a little. I don't think a woman should ever get totally out of practice, but that's as far as it goes.
The last weekend he was here, he got the end of the house almost all done, only quitting because the light had gone, although he did work a while after that because he had a headlight. He was supposed to come out this last weekend and finish the end and come around to the front, and replace the kneewall which we'd had to pull off because it had rotted, after which the house would be ready to paint. On Saturday, he called saying that he had to help someone out with a job of theirs, but he'd be there the next day, with reinforcements. Except he wasn't. I called him, and left a message in his voice mail, and usually he's good about calling back, but I didn't hear from him all the rest of the day.
Monday afternoon, the mystery was solved: at 4:45, he called and explained that he hadn't come on Sunday because he spent the weekend in the pokey (his words). Seems that after his last job, he and a bud bought a 6-pack of beer, and had one apiece. And then he was pulled over for not using his signal, and then the cop spotted the two empties in the truck. And he refused the breathalyser test, because he believes them to be inaccurate, insisting on a blood test. So he got busted. His boss had to bail him out, and he withdrew and used every last penny in his bank account to pay his lawyer. Moreover, the week before, he'd quarreled with his girlfriend, who threw him out, so he was living in a hotel on the expressway that has an evil reputation. It--or one of its rooms--was featured in our local free rag as the venue of a meth lab.
So he said he'd knock $200 off his original quote if I'd give him enough money so he could feed his truck and pay his hotel bill and eat and stuff. I found myself agreeing to give him $500, because I know from personal experience how fast $200 melts away when it's all you've got in the world. Except that he asked me to make the check out to a friend, because he didn't have a bank account, because he'd closed out his and couldn't open a new one until he had his ID back--he was driving on a hardship permit so that he could do his job. He thanked me profusely, and I went back to my work, feeling exactly like a woman who's let a man fast-talk her into doing something against her better judgment, and which, for all she knows, could land her ass in trouble.
I left the check under a paint can on my back porch the next morning, and for the next few hours I had daymares about the friend taking the check, cashing it, and lighting out for Ybor City or wherever people light out for in this part of the world, when they've absquatulated with someone else's money. But evidently his friend had proved true, because we spoke later in the day, and he seemed considerably happier, and he's promised to bring at least two other guys and get my house finished this coming weekend.
In the meantime, the weather has been foul, and I'm really starting to wonder if this will get done by Christmas. I'd wanted to put up lights. I'd even had an electrician come out an install a receptacle in the front of the house--which should have been installed when it was built--but I can hardly do this before the siding's all done, now can I?
Feh.
