Thursday, May 17, 2007

Where's George?

I'm beginning to get worried about George, our garage contractor.
It's been about a week since we've had a conversation with him. I've left a dozen or so voicemails on his cell phone - since he doesn't answer when I call - and none have been returned.
Maria's son Austin, who worked on George's crews the last couple of weeks, yesterday confirmed that George has been having trouble with his cell phone and that he's missed a lot of voicemails. And that George had strep throat last week while he and his crew roofed three houses.
But that doesn't completely explain why he missed an 11 a.m. Friday meeting with us and failed to show up at the 6 p.m. Monday building commission meeting. And the $14,920 worth of lumber and other building materials that we paid for on May 1 that was supposed to be delivered to our place a week ago by Menards.
Austin enjoyed working for George and was making more money per hour than he ever has, but he quit this week to take a factory job claiming it was easier and steadier, since construction workers miss work when it rains. So I lost an alternate way to contact George through Austin.
I've dealt with contractors before. My ex and I did an extensive remodel of our house in Indianapolis that dragged on and on because the contractor kept finding other places to be instead of on our job.
Until now, that hadn't been a problem with George.
I prefer to believe he's just overwhelmed with work now that he's working for himself.
But I have a nagging feeling that our $14,920 got used to subsidize someone else's project and that he may be having trouble scrounging up the money for our building materials. God, I hope that isn't what's happening because it would seriously damage the trust I have in the guy.
At the moment we have a very nice deck - although one of the boards wasn't properly secured at one end and is now warping into a shape that will trip someone eventually - but the hot tub is still empty and not on the deck and we have a partially demolished concrete slab that still has to be removed before the new foundation can be blocked out and poured.
And now that we have our building permit, George's lack of follow-through is the only thing standing between us and having our garage.

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