All Forum Posts by: Leland S.

Hi, I just took a contract job in Pasadena and I'm not liking the rental options. I hate to sign up for a contract with a company to pay rent (Plus I can't be sure of this contract lasting). I'd rather find a 2 bedroom place to move in and VRBO the other room or rent it. As for commute times, I'm looking anything North East of the 101 for the most part to avoid long commute. 

I did a search on <450k 2 bed/2 bath and it seems like there are plenty. I'm thinking a condo/townhome/SFH that fits that criteria but would create high returns on a VRBO of the other room would make the most financial sense to me.

Recommendations? 

Congrats man. Nice work. 

Only it's not a BRRRR until you do it twice :D

 Jonathan, how are the door frames still incorrect? I haven't had anybody familiar with framing review in person, so I don't know. 

 My GC was bragging to me about how great of an idea it was so that the cars could easily get passed the area. 

The engineer said the deck posts were improperly spaced and he has to redo them, he's telling me he's "not redoing anything" just can easily add the posts... All of the jacks in the basement $1300 worth, are temporary jack posts, wasted money and the floor is still uneven, he said he already knew they were temporary except hadn't actually put in any permanent support posts and the jacks were bending. 

The engineer said it was fine to cut out the beam, apparently it's not an LVL beam which is why it's so dang big. The engineer said he just reduces the calculation of the load based on how much it was cut, I was surprised by this. 

What is wrong with the door framing now? He does use green card mexican labor, but they aren't exactly that cheap at $200/day. 

Looks like his "fix" is in.... Look OK?? I think the deck looks nice. 

I am sending a licensed engineer out there tomorrow to take a look. 

 I was nervous about it, but I've had licensed crews work up a sh*t storm on my last place billing me 10k/wk and the trim out was a total slop job. So I got a couple strong references for him and he is long time friends with my parents good friend, so it's slightly better than a craigslist rando. I'm having him send me pictures every day but since I live in AZ I only travel out there to see once a month, that is when I observed in person the beam was unnecessarily low and the floor needed to be bolstered. I don't want to take shortcuts and keep telling him to do things right. I'm guessing he's probably more experienced with trim out, decks, and porches than framing. But as they always do, they self aggrandize and say "oh we do everything, built whole houses from ground up". That's what the framing guys told me last time and their framing was great, trim out was crap. Hope he will comply with the engineer I get in there. If not I will shut him down until he does or move on.

 I have no contract. He didn't want to sign anything or accept any payments directly. He only works over the phone. I'm going to send in an engineer and see what he thinks, if it's really bad, I'll stop work until I can get it fixed. He seems to think no mistakes were made as of now.

I tried to send in a framing guy to inspect the job but he said the place was closed up and nobody there at 9am. My contractor insists the door was open all day. 

Next up, I am sending over a structural engineering guy to take a look. My contractor keeps insisting everything is fine and he never failed inspection and the walls (he didn't install, eg ceiling) will be closed up before inspector gets there so as "not to open any cans of worms". 

 I'll find out cause I just bought it...mostly because of the mastermind group. 

 He's doing a lot more than just framing. He did the whole outside, deck, and new basement supports (which still didn't fix the floor level issues). Most of the work seems fine, but this beam was very odd