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January 24, 2005
Stop the ride, I wanna get off.
I was in a group status meeting this morning from 10-11, and my cel phone was ringing off the hook. I was ignoring it 'till I got to calls, nearly back to back, from Dawnise - our agreed upon signal for "I really need to talk to you." We came up with it when I was commuting on the motorcycle - I would ignore the first call, but if two came in rapid succession it meant I needed to pull over and call her back.
Returning that call launched the house fire-drill for the morning - apparently the paint color we had chosen for the trim (a muted blue, called "Urban Twilight") was going on really bright and garish - like those blue tarps they sell at Home Depot - and the builder was freaking out. The especially annoying thing was that we didn't just pick that color - for the first time in our lives we intentionally stuck with a pre-chosen set of coordinated colors, precisely to avoid this sort of situation.
I called him back and started trying to come up with a plan - but he pretty much cut off every workable avenue. I couldn't see what he was seeing, and if we didn't make a decision right now it would delay close -- there wasn't even time, apparently, for Dawnise to catch the next ferry over and see it with her own eyes.
Talk about being backed into a corner.
I didn't have much to offer - since we had chosen the color from a color swatch, and what the builder was describing was nothing like the swatch, I didn't see what good it would do to choose another color. We finally agreed to let the painter mix a bit of black into the paint to tone down the color (his suggestion) and I went back to my increasingly hectic morning.
Got a call about 40 minutes later - seems the painter got to the paint supplier, they listened very nicely to his concern, and informed him that the paint would match the color swatch once it dried - and demonstrated that by painting something and drying it with a heat gun.
So the whole damn fire-drill was pointless.
All it did was get my royally pissed off at the builder. I mean, I appreciate him wanting to keep us involved, and being concerned that we might be unhappy with the finished result - but what he essentially did was to call me and say - "you need to make a decision, but I won't tell you enough to make an intelligent decision - so you might as well flip a coin."
The good news is that we're officially back on track for an on-time close - apparently they had a very productive weekend, and the weather today, and the short-term forecast, are excellent (uncharacteristically good for Seattle this time of year). Once again, we (myself, our agent, and his agent) tried to give him an out - and he insists we're on schedule.
If he slips the date now, there's likely to be violence.
Posted by dberger at January 24, 2005 3:49 PM