Negative Progress

I'm sure most of you are hoping to find some pictures of the kids and not another rant about the house construction, but alas, you're in for the latter. This one is fully on the shoulders of the previous owners. The basement was unfinished when they bought it, and when they finished it, they didn't pull the HVAC lines through from the third floor to the exterior of the house. So now that we're finishing the third floor and need another AC unit to support the additional space, the lines we needed were still up in the ceiling and now covered by drywall. So yesterday the workers nicely cut holes in the walls and ceiling in the family room to run the lines to the exterior of the house.

I can't tell you how annoying this is. The basement was the only floor of the house the workers hadn't had any impact on. The first and second floor have been hammered in the entry, hallways, and stairs up to the third floor. This was the one part of the house where we could escape to to get away from the mess and noise. Ripken also sometimes sleeps down there in a pack n play when they are banging too much on the third floor for him to nap on the second floor. Yesterday there were 4 crews here at once: electricians, HVAC, sprinklers, and door hangers. Then the Fire Marshall came to test the sprinklers, which automatically sets off the smoke alarm. Poor Rippy couldn't sleep anywhere with them all over the whole house.

The major life lesson is this: you should never say "the worst is behind us" because when you do, they cut huge holes in your existing walls and ceilings and use blow torches in your family room.