Despite a number of major setback so far, we are forging ahead. Below are pictures of the house since we took over from our former general contractor. Things are moving ahead but not nearly as quickly as we would like.

Tim has put his house in San Francisco on the market and is now living near the site of our cabins. As soon as Tim took over the role of contractor, the first step in cleaning up the mess left by the contractor was to access where the project actually is and make a list of priorities.

Our first priority is to get the roof sheathing finished and complete the roof for obvious reasons. That was completed just before the first heavy rain of the year.

He is now moving on to interior rough framing. This past weekend we went through the structure to identify items to address in order to complete rough framing. During our assessment we realized just how much our contractor had charged us for and how little he had managed to get done. It was like opening a box of "Crackerjacks" only to find that not only is the prize missing but half of the caramel corn is gone too.

Not only do we have a significant amount of structural rough framing to complete, we have a structure with now windows or doors installed, no interior walls and one which was open to the weather.

We are plunging ahead and are hiring our own subcontractors. This house has to be made ready for the rest of winter and fast.

How does that saying go? Drastic times call for drastic measures.

After weeks of positive reports from the contractor, my partner and I visited the building site over the holiday. On the surface things looked good. But that was deceiving. After closer inspection, we realized the contractor and his team had somehow made the site look like it was progressing but no work was actually being done. In fact, the project is weeks behind schedule. The worst part came when we started comparing the materials bills against the materials on the site. Thousands of dollars worth of materials have been purchased and delivered to the site, but have not been used and are no longer at the site. We are now looking at a huge loss. We are weeks behind schedule and have paid for supplies that we don't have.

My business partner has decided to leave his full time position and become a full time project manager for our cabins. We fired our contactor. Over the next few weeks we will be attempting to recover our building supplies but in the mean time we will be purchasing new materials and moving this project forward with our own subcontractors. Hopefully this will be a turning point in our project.

Pictures will be posted as soon as there is progress to photograph.

My partner and I took a day off this week and ventured up to the property. We were disappointed with the progress. Our contractor had told us that he expected to have the logs set by now, but we found only a foundation at the site. The contractor informed us that he was having difficulty with some of his employees showing up on time or at  all to the job site. He said he has resolved the issues and that the team will work twice as fast this coming week to get back on schedule.

Our contractor promised to give us a call by the end of next week to update us on the progress. We really need to get this project back on schedule.

We visited the construction sites over the weekend. We are impressed with the progress. Everything seems to be on track. The excavation is complete. As you can see by the photos below, the contractors have started the foundation work.

My business partner and I have both returned to work and are now relying on our contractor to provide regular updates on the project. So far so good.  I spoke with him yesterday and he said nearly all of the excavation is done and concrete should be poured tomorrow. We have set up accounts at a couple of supply places for him so he can get all of supplies he needs and won't have to stop and wait for money from us. He promised pictures by early next week and I will post as soon as I get them.

We are making progress now! We broke ground on the first home on Friday. Things are going well. Below are pictures.

The meeting with the contractor was a success. We hired him despite a few unsettling details. We were impressed with that he was impressed with himself. The biggest issue for us was that he provided his proposal/estimate for the foundation on a napkin. This lack of professionalism has us a little nervous, but we really don't have any other options. We are set to break ground tomorrow.

Our selection of contractors went from us selecting the best candidate to us settling for the only candidate.

We approached several local contractors and consistently ran up against the common responses of "Don't have time on the schedule" or " Don't do log homes." Time and money are burning. We had a framing contractor who is talented and efficient but he back out at the last minute.

We now are left with just one option. A friend of ours, a stucco/plaster contractor, recommended a guy that might be able to help us but has no other references. We are meeting with him this afternoon.

We really hope this works out this afternoon. We need to get construction started and don't have any other options for a contractor at this point.

We thought final approval was going to be easy after getting preliminary approval so quickly. We were wrong.

Our plans had the house built on the same setback as the rest of the homes on the street. When the county planners reviewed our plans for construction they identified that the plans did not meet the setback requirements. Our rebuttal was that all the other houses on the street had the same or similar setback. The county admitted that we were correct but if we wanted to build with this plan we would have to file for a variance and that would take about 3 months.

Based on their preliminary approval we have already secured construction funds with a secure timeline and corresponding penalties for delays. A variance isn't going to work.

We are now reworking our plans and pushing the house farther down the slope, which is going to mean more engineering, more design changes, and more money.

We are regrouping and will resubmit our new plans to the county next week.