A $2200 Lesson
With any luck, we will take possession of PJP West End tomorrow. If you remember, we were promised full possession on August 3rd…and then August 15th…and then September 8th…and now we’ve settled on tomorrow. I keep waiting to feel righteously indignant about the delays, but PJP Nifong is too busy for me to have a bee in my bonnet about it all. Everything in the construction process is delayed by weeks (and in some cases, by months) and there isn’t a darn thing we can do about it all.
Here’s what else is going on:
Our building permit for PJP West End in is 614% more expensive than our building permit for PJP Nifong was in 2019. That’s because we had to pay to connect the sewer to the city line at PJP West End and that is a $2200 fee. TWENTY TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS to connect our new bathroom to the city line in the street behind the building. Had I known that, I would have bought Jeanne and I some shovels and asked for a map to the line.
(Actually, it was a $2200 lesson in choosing an available lease space with an existing bathroom. Don’t think I won’t forget that for PJP #3.)
And in looking at the budget, I noticed our dumpster fee varies on how long we keep the dumpster and how many times it has to be dumped. This worries me because of the amount of random personal garbage in our Nifong dumpster on a weekly basis since the city started the two-bags-of-garbage-a-week rule. I will dig out the garbage and find the offenders myself if we have to pay to dump our construction dumpster before our trash fills it up.
Jeanne has demanded a high gloss finish for the flooring at PJP West End because she swears our flooring at Nifong never looks clean, even when freshly mopped. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard the high gloss finish is less bakery and more car dealership high gloss. So, let’s hope she likes it.
Our landlord finished out the bathroom in accordance with the lease agreement, but we have to finish out the office in accordance with our building plans. The office in the new space is immediately next to the bathroom, which may be awkward at best…and annoying in the least. Today our builder surprised me with the promise of a fully insulated wall between the bathroom and the office AND IT WON’T EVEN COST ANYTHING EXTRA.
