The Green Machine Enters a Black Hole

A great silence has fallen across the country, from our architectural firm in Minnesota to the sullen modular factory in Indiana to the East, where fall is closing in and winter is not far behind, and our contractor Pete is tap, tapping the earth listening to it freeze in the not-too-distant future. It is as if our house is being constructed in the wind. Every once in awhile some breeze of information puffs in on an email, information that appears to be moving things along, but is, in reality, only a letter written in light.  

Two things have been accomplished to date: the rudiments of a driveway that comes to a confused end in the middle of the field and the purchase of our tractor, which in a creepy moment I gave the cute name: "The Hamster", because "ham" is the last syllable of both Michael's and my name (Grisham and Peckham).  On its second run, its brush hog attachment trembled like a baby and went to the tractor hospital, where the doctors found nothing wrong with it. I believe it longs, as we do, for the big bulldozers, the excavators, the well and trench diggers, all the ruinous engines of destruction required to carve out the surfaces for our ever-elusive house.

Throughout the first quarter of the year, we had jolly conversations back and forth with our architects, identifying the appliances in our fantasy kitchen, placing the lively wood stoves, thoughtfully choosing the sustainable flooring. One grim February day we drove an hour and a half to Paramus and wandered through Ikea's labyrinth looking at three million kitchen cabinets until we were stunned into indecision by its spectacular awe fullness.  We went home, opened up the wine in the beautiful silence of our living room, picked out our cabinets, worked out the kitchen layout on Ikea's clever website, and sent the plans to our architects.  Everyone was happy, everyone in cahoots.

In March we calculated the amount of kilowatts we'd need to make our house come alive, and, in April, Michael and our architects burrowed into the maze of insulation options. We hired Dave, a deeply cynical HVAC consultant, with misleadingly sad eyes and the jowls of a basset hound, to worry out where cold would leak into the house and how it could be counteracted by the heat-radiating PEX snaking under our floor and the heat pumps moving warmth from the earth via the geothermal wells.   

By May we wrestled our window decisions into place, choosing a Canadian company, which has a clever tilting apparatus that will let us clean the panes on the second floor without a ladder. At the end of that month, the factory also sent a letter of agreement with a series of milestones, including dates for sending them a lot of money for a bunch of materials, culminating in the big check for executing the final contract by June 30^th.  Our architect estimated a delivery date of the modules in mid-September, assuming all the milestones were met.  Hurray! 

Then something odd occurred.  No one asked us for our money at the end of June.  The summer muddled along through July, with emails from the architect, irritating in their gnat-like importance (how about a small window on the second floor, would we like steel barn doors downstairs, what color do we want the priming paint and here's some pictures of paint cans). July ended with our money still in the bank (except for a fat payment to the window company) and no contract from the factory.  Pete was still waiting for final construction drawings so he could get a building permit from the town and start scheduling the foundation work. 

At the very end of July the architect promised a final budget and said he had been "plying the factory to keep to their expected schedule."  That month sped by, too, interrupted only by a lengthy discussion on garage trusses.  Michael remained Zen.  I alternated between trying to imitate him and screaming at random strangers and trees.

Then, at the beginning of August, the reason for the factory's limping behavior and sullen silence became clear. Its owner, a relatively small aw-shucks Midwestern company, had been acquired by a giant Florida-based real estate development corporation. Our architect had been blind-sided as well, and he apologized, passing on the inevitable shabby lie hissed by all company buyers, nation conquerors, and apple-offering snakes throughout time:  "Don't worry, they've promised that nothing will change."  

Of course, something had changed – the module delivery date and, a couple days after our architect talked to us, our basic agreement with the factory.  The acquiring monster corporation had no idea how to construct a deal with an actual human, so it wanted to do the contract with a business, which would be that of our contractor Pete. So, this meant that a bunch of lawyers would now latch on to our project like ticks, infecting it with more delays, and Pete would increase his fee – adding up to 15% to the cost of the modules -- since he was now managing the factory process for no reason at all and the fee for his liability insurance is based on his billing.  We were ready to walk away. Our barn apartment was looking pretty good.  So they caved. 

They'll do the agreement directly with us, they said, and get the agreement to us in a week.  But time had already passed.  On August 6^th, we received a contract, which we reviewed and pointed out a couple things missing from the original agreement – nothing big, some bathroom fixtures, little stuff, nothing that couldn’t be restored to the contract in a couple of minutes.  Back into the darkness it went.  After some nagging, we were guaranteed that we'd have the agreement back by the end of the month.

Today is August 31^st.  We talked to our architect about stair railings and a bathroom cabinet, with the contract still in the void or being ripped into strips by prairie dogs somewhere on the Great Plains to line their holes.  "What happened?" We asked.  "We were supposed to sign this in June?"

Our beleaguered architect stumbled through a number of awkward phrases that were not even pretend excuses. "Well, things have slipped… vacation…waiting for ducts…the acquisition."  He added, with some hope, that the head of the architectural firm is going to the factory tomorrow and would definitely exert pressure.

So, here's where it stands, or doesn't stand.  Once we finally sign the damn thing, the factory still won't schedule production of the modules for another five weeks.  And, we have to order the flooring, which takes six to eight weeks to be delivered to the factory for installation, which could bring us to mid October.  Apparently, the trolls now running the factory are very optimistic that they can put 2,500 square feet of housing together within two weeks, truck four modules across the country, and plop them on our site by November 1.  If they don't make that date or very near it, Pete warned, cold weather could prevent his crew from completing the last part of their button-up work until spring, and "you don't want to have to heat your foundation all winter long".

I am haunted by the memory of a meeting we had with Pete, Dave the HVAC guy, and our excavator Paul toward the end of June, soon after the factory ensured us that the final agreement was coming that month.  We wanted to schedule all the site work during that time.  "Everything should be done in time for the delivery of the modules, which the factory said will be here September 15^th," I announced exuberantly (for tone, think Shirley Temple tapping out the Good-Ship-Lollipop).  At that point, Dave, staring at me with those droopy, knowing, sad eyes began a dirge under his breath, "We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year." Haha, I laughed, enjoying the joke. "Haha."