The Gurly Life

There is NO WAY!!

That my mom and I would EVER assemble this. I mean, Jesus Mary and Joseph look how many pieces! The feet belong to one half of the assembly team.

My place is upside down, and I'm happy about it

I mentioned a few weeks ago that finally construction has begun at our building. This is a good thing because (a) we get to fix the construction defect that the developer left us with, subsequently dying in a plane crash and having his complete lack of assets finally revealed so that we could not collect for the damage anyway, and (b) I can refi, thusly saving myself some serious dough.

The work began about a month ago, and there's been serious hammering and shaking and my place has been surrounded by a plastic sheet for a couple of weeks. This is less lovely now that it's getting warm, by the way.

This work gave me an opportunity to upgrade some of my windows. The developer had put new, double-paned windows on two sides of the building, and not on the other two sides. (In answer to your question, Why?, Because he was a cheap bastard.) The windows are in, but the workers had to remove the blinds in the kitchen and now the shutters in the bedroom.

They won't be back up till Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, I'm up at 6am. The sun shines right into my bedroom window in the morning, and the mirror closet doors reflect it, so I get it from all angles. Regardless, this is good.

Oh, the loud banging is a joy

Construction has begun at my building. I'll give you the background: my building is an apartment conversion. Converting apartments into condos became very popular when Santa Monica dropped its rent-control requirement about a decade ago. I'm not in Santa Monica, but it's now more common than it used to be for developers to purchase an apartment building, remodel it, and then sell the units as condos. Or maybe it's always been popular, I just didn't know it. Whatever.

As I said, my building is an apartment conversion. The developer who remodeled the building did some things well, and some things ass. One of the things he didn't do well is weather-proof the building. Yup. You can see the problem. The very first winter after the units were sold, 2004-05, we had the craziest rains I've ever seen in my 17 years here, and the defect was revealed in all its glory. The HOA (home owner's association) sued the developer for construction defects. We were chugging along at the speed of molasses on a cold day, when the developer saw fit to die in a plane crash. We soon discovered that the developer's wealth was a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme, if you will.

The HOA therefore decided that we can't hang out with this construction defect, each time it rains it damages the building a little more. We voted, and the vote was to fix the thing. Yesterday, construction began. There is a lot of loud banging all day long, and there will be for about a month. Today I work from home, and it's distracting but frankly, I'm glad it's happening. Not only will the defect be fixed, I will get new windows (to the tune of $4,000 - still, let expensive than if I did this all on my own, because then I'd have to pay for the permits, the crane, etc. etc.), and I will be able to refinance at the current super-low rates and save myself hundreds of dollars every month. I greatly look forward to that. Greatly.

Bang on, I say.