Deck The Halls and Haul The Deck
Did I mention that I am playing contractor on my deck renovation? Even if I did, I need to howl at the moon over this and so this story is what comes out. Long ago I thought I wanted to be an architect. That morphed into wanting to be a structural engineer, which evolved into an engineer more broadly, and that drifted based on a nasty run-in with calculus and a squadron of pre-meds taking Chemistry my freshman year into my going the route of economics and government as majors. Meanwhile, my sister had worked her way through architecture school at Washington University in St. Louis, where she met her kindred spirit fellow architect student, Bennett. The two of them were wed following college and they both went on to get their masters degrees and to begin practicing architecture. That was forty-seven years ago and during that time I went off to Wall Street and did what people who can’t do calculus do, start businesses like derivatives trading where the partial differential equations of calculus are the building blocks of far more exotic financial structures and you hire scads of Ph.D. Students in nuclear physics and applied math that can do calculus in their sleep.
After all of that was “been there, done that”, I was asked to run a distressed real estate developer that had twenty-two trophy properties in various stages of development. My first day was spent up seventy-two stories over Miami trying to understand why the architects had made this particular trophy building with the world’s tallest outdoor catwalk across the back of the building and a huge hole in the design that consequently (due partially to the catwalking) created the world’s biggest man made example of the Venturi Effect to the detriment of residents who wanted to actually swim on the pool deck. I got a crash course in real estate development and working with architects and contractors for the two years I spent extracting all twenty-two properties from foreclosure, learning a few things as I went about the contracting process. Add to that six years trying and failing to build the world’s largest observation wheel (ala The London Eye), but not before sinking $450 million into the dirt on the north shore of Staten Island, and I think I can say I’ve seen a lot of the give-and-take of construction.
My holiday season this year between Thanksgiving and New Years will be mostly dominated by my project of rehabilitating my broken deck. The first task has been to establish just how broken it is. As we dig the holes for the four pilings we are putting in to support the new beam we are placing in the middle of the deck to make sure we strengthen the structure, we are also peeling off the tile and subfloor to get a look at the damaged areas to their fullest. As sensible as this may be, its painful from my perspective because every time part of the surface is removed my heart stops in hopes that there is no further sign of damage. Naturally, the areas that come off the easiest and first are the ones most likely to have damage. To borrow from an expression in the private equity world, in the construction orchard, the lemons always ripen first. We have found at least three of four sour lemons so far, but at least in between the damage seems minimal. My objective is to keep as much of the structure in tact and use the techniques we have developed for shoring up the existing joists, putting a new support beam under the most weight-bearing area and replacing 100% of the subfloor and tile, and then Bob’s your uncle, as they say. This is already much more work than we had originally planned and I suspect we are over-building this structure so that if the big one ever hits Southern California, the only thing that might be left standing is this deck.
I have created a three-part spreadsheet to manage this project. I must have downloaded three project management apps on my iPad, but after trying to input the project data to all three, I have reverted to my old standby, the infamous Excel spreadsheet that has served me well through the futures and options business, the merchant banking business, the LDC debt crisis, the deep-discounted emerging markets debt business, the real estate restructuring business and now the scientific R&D business. I was once told by my friend Jay, who recently retired as a four-star Marine General Officer (do you know how few of those exist?) that he managed the entire Desert Storm deployment for General Schwarzkopf with a 43-part Excel spreadsheet. I somehow think my three-part construction management spreadsheet will work just fine for this deck project. One sub-spreadsheet is about labor deployment and cost, one about materials purchases and cost and the third about task management and scheduling. I’m sure this project will not manage itself and I’ll bet that spreadsheet won’t make or break the project, but what it will do is make me feel much better at estimating costs, timing and resources so that we don’t do stupid things like having workers standing around with nothing to do or nothing to do it with.
The deck is just off the living room and the floor-to-ceiling windows make the living room subject to the vagaries of the deck work. While the team is fixing the deck, I will be putting up the Christmas tree and such for holiday decorations. I’ve already put up the front gate decorations and Kim has literally put a bow on them. I’ve also put up lights on the garden fountain and the Joshua Tree metal statue in the back. I would like to think that the deck ups and downs won’t affect my Christmas spirit, but I also know that if I’m trimming the tree while watching the unfolding of the next deck disaster, I cannot be held accountable for my state of mind. My best hope is that the unfolding of the deck drama happens quickly and that the path to redemption is clear as the holidays blossom. This is a tough enough holiday year without the burdens of a construction lump of coal getting put in my stocking.
In the next few days the deck surface will be totally removed and we should be able to see which joists and beams are compromised. We had planned to shore up eight joists of the thirty-three and we expected the existing outer beams were good to retain. We already believe that we will be shoring up another few of those joists, which is an insignificant adjustment. What I am hoping is that all of the outer beams are good enough to bear up or are fixable. This should be clear soon. So I am hoping that while I deck the halls with holiday cheer, the team will be hauling the deck into the 7’X7’X22’ dumpster that I am have placed on my driveway for the next five days. Wish me Happy Holidays.