rocknhorse's blog

hurry up and wait...

 abuse

I think I'll make that title my new logo.  Hurry up and wait.  That's the way I feel about our house project.  We are told to 'hurry up' and get this part done, so we do, then we have to W....A.....I.....T before the next part begins.   

We have been plagued with 3 week delays continuously by the mover.  Three times thus far to be exact.  Ah, well!  Such is the norm for a construction project.  Now that things are ready, we are waiting to hear from the utility companies about dropping power lines.  All is good for phone and cable, they are all underground.  Now we are waiting to hear from power.  Depending on the cost to drop lines, we may decide to move the house in two pieces-top and bottom.  My hope is that the house can be moved in one piece, but we will go with the most feasibly economical. 

Another interesting thing we encountered is about our address.  Apparently, since this was a piece of property cut from a larger tract, the address we'd been given when we closed on the land was incorrect.  We found this out just a couple of weeks ago when the bank went to inspect the footings.  Turns out, the address we had, which we used for all the permits, school records, etc, belongs to a neighbor.  After recovering that portion of our brain that seemed to explode through our ears, we put on our game face and approached the county offices to correct the problem. 

We were prepared for a long, harried day of nightmare forms, brick walls and frustrations.  What we encountered was a group of people so incredibly helpful that we were laughing at the ease of it all.  At the JC office, we spoke first with a lady in customer service.  We explained the dilema and she pointed us to the first office to whom we needed to speak and gave us a name of someone to ask for help.  After thanking her, we walked across the hallway and into the first office.  When we asked for the lady whom was referred, she was already printing a form for us.  With a smile on her face, she explained that the first lady we spoke to sent an email explaining the problem, so she went ahead and made the correction.  She directed us to the next office, with this form she printed in hand. 

By the time we walked down the hallway to the next office and identified ourselves, this next group of wonderful people had already been clued-in by both the customer service lady and the land use department.  They made the appropriate corrections on the forms and permits and directed us to utilities.  This went just as easily, with smiling, helpful folks who were always a step ahead of us. 

By the time all of this was complete, I asked for something to give the schools.  I had, afterall, already registered my kids with the old address.  Two copies of a brief form letter later and we were finished with what we expected to be a nightmare.  As we left, we thanked everyone who had made that experience so easy! 

We stopped by the schools, prepared to fill out all the paperwork again.  The office staff informed us that the letter would be fine and they would just make the changes in the system based on the letter.  No need to re-do all the paperwork. 

I continue to be amazed at the ease with which this is moving.  Sure, there's a lot of hurry up and wait.  I think that's rather to be expected.  But I was pretty certain that there would be headaches in dealing with the County regarding the permits, et al.  Isn't it supposed to be difficult to work with Gov't employees?  All I can say is the staff at the Johnston County offices are the most helpful and wonderful people I've met.  They have made this process easy, even when we thought the hurdle would be tall. 

Well, that's our latest and greatest.  Now that the address is correct, we are waiting to hear from the power company any day.  Depending on their costs to drop lines, we'll be ready to begin the process to move the house any day now.  Once it's on the footings, we will begin the foundation and THEN we can begin OUR part of the remodel!   PHEW!