I remember the last project Mom and Dad attempted up in the little village by the bay. It was a two-car garage with a neat little apartment on the second floor. It was neat, and provided a place for the kids to stay when performing one of the check-in visits. It enabled Dad to take a supervisory role, and ladle some of the saved cash at a project they could watch being performed with energy. It provided a certain symbiotic strength.

We are doing one of those here in Piedmont Virginia. We engaged one of the likely workmen who had successfully accomplished a task for the Ukrainians on the adjacent property. He brought his team out to the farm and extend the deck on the front porch, bound it with neat railings, and extend the proud roof in green-colored steel to provide cover against the elements.

The porch extension project was intended to provide a safe and secure place to sit in a dry place, something lacking on the back porch under the roll-down awning that displayed a tendency to flap with the wind, and on the front, provide no shelter at all.

I had not intended to embark on a health adventure to be coincidental with the project, and with that level of distraction added to the mix, would have preferred to execute only one project at a time, and sequential in timing. That imposed supervision of labor on Grace, who then also had to manage supplemental support to me in supervised care in a variety of Piedmont locations. Obviously, planning could have been better!

So, there was the challenge that greeted us upon release from Rehabilitation last week. Our workers had done a nice job on carpentry, railing and screening. They had drifted in the completion phase, though, and the extended roof of adamant steel did not match the larger metallic structure to which it was attached. You know the type. Large and flat and colored a pleasant green.

That involved another contractor whose supply chain connections were more robust, and whose language skills included both Spanish and English. In both, to some degree, we addressed some concern over concrete basing for the extended floor space, and emergence of another supplemental project to improve the curb-appeal of the front view of Refuge Farm. That added the prospect of yet another member of the family of “last” projects, in an attempt to not make the sale of the property the “first” project for the ultimate inheritors of the property.

Mom and Dad did a nicer job on sequencing their Last Project, but we will do what we can with a construction conference on this coming Monday. It will provide some energy in what is traditionally the last week of the Summer season, the entry to Labor Day, and the change of the skies above us.

It was near ninety degrees and moist yesterday. The Hispanic labor crew had made a rare appearance to attempt to clean up some of the detritus of earlier construction. They installed the screen door carefully fabricated to custom size on site, but somehow with the locking mechanism reversed so that it operated only from the outside. An interesting approach, which had led to importation of another contractor who claims his supply chain management is superior. And a new five-figure number to load atop the original project plan.

We have adjusted to the idea that this was not the Last Project, but an intermediate step toward a little easier living. We will see how that goes in this week- the last summer week- that is to come!

– Vic

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com