Summer of Delay

Tomorrow is the last day of August, which means that summer is pretty much over. And when it comes to our cabin project, pretty much nothing has happened.

The construction season in the North Woods is generally four to six months long. We can’t begin work in the spring until the county lifts the road restrictions: heavy trucks are not permitted on the gravel roads until the ground is completely melted and the road is dry. That normally happens around the beginning of June. And work stops with the first heavy snow unless we want to pay someone to plow the mile-long drive to our building site. Sometime in November is a good guess for the end of the season, but it could happen any time from October through December.

We were all set for an aggressive construction schedule this spring: our general contractor told us we were at the top of his list for this year and was optimistic he’d be able to start work in June. To actually build anything, we need to coordinate things so we have workers, material, and equipment on site all at the same time. And that’s where things started to fall apart.

The first thing we tried to do was get an empty shipping container delivered to the site. This would be used for weathertight storage of the major building components, with the idea that it would be easier to get materials delivered early and store them than try to arrange shipments to arrive within a few weeks of when they’re needed. Mostly on cue the delivery driver drove to our site on the appointed day (a few hours late)….and refused to drive the last mile to the site itself. The driver felt the road was overgrown and was concerned about getting stuck.

This was mystifying, since we’ve had other contractors bring larger trucks down that road without any issues. We know the road is wide enough, firm enough, and has wide enough turns to accommodate a full-size semi with a 40-foot trailer. But to be fair to the driver, he’s probably not used to these narrow forest roads, and there was a lot of brush along the sides of the road making it look much narrower than it is. And he was hours from home, in an area with limited to no cell service, so getting stuck would be catastrophically bad. Furthermore, he was several hours late, so the person who was supposed to meet him had gone home. We sent the driver back with our container while we considered our options.

Then we ran into issues with the plumber. In order to build the foundation we need to have a plumber as part of the crew, to ensure all the under-slab penetrations are set correctly, and the plumber our general contractor planned to work with turned out to not be reliable. There’s apparently been some drama around the sale of the plumbing business; I don’t really know the details but it’s made it hard to get the plumber to commit to anything or even return calls.

In the meanwhile, we ordered the major building components: windows and structural panels. We placed those orders so they would be delivered in July, when we thought we’d be ready for them. None of those materials have shown up either, which is actually fine because we don’t have a place to store them and no foundation to build on. But the window company did try to sneak in a price increase despite a contract with a firm price commitment (highlighted in yellow, no less).

And then a couple weeks ago we got a message that the Forest Service road about a mile and a half from our property had washed out and a contractor couldn’t get back to the building site. That road washes out a lot, but it’s normally passable (with care). I contacted the Forest Service to find out if it could get repaired, but was told that it’s considered a “minimal maintenance” road and there’s no budget to fix back roads like that.

It’s not all bleak. The District Ranger for our district personally responded to my emails and we had a helpful conversation where I learned that Cook County is planning to rebuild the communications tower near our property next spring. In order to do that work, they plan to repair the forest road this fall, before it snows. So while the forest service doesn’t have a budget for back road maintenance, there is a pot of money for maintaining emergency communications which includes repairing roads needed to access remote radio towers.

And our general contractor says he plans to start work on the foundation as early as next week: he finally got a commitment from the plumber and thinks we can have all the pieces in place any day now. Experience has taught me to be skeptical, but it’s the most hopeful sign we’ve gotten in a while.

Today I was at the property with two of my kids and a pickup bed full of tools. We found that, while the forest road was in worse condition than the last time we visited in June, it wasn’t that much worse. We had no trouble in our F-150, and most ordinary vehicles should be able to get through if they take it slow and pick their path through the ruts carefully. Armed with a fresh permit from the Forest Service, we spent a few hours clearing brush and saplings away from the drive back to our property. The road doesn’t look nearly as intimidating now, and our truck can drive all the way to the site without so much as a leaf brushing a mirror (for reference, the truck is about 8’ wide to the edges of the mirrors). I’m optimistic that it won’t scare future delivery drivers, at least not to the point where they turn around and go home.

So are we actually going to get some work done this fall? Experience so far has taught me not to get my hopes up, but maybe this will be the time we get lucky.