Brickbats

Like the swallows coming back to Capistrano, our association has yet another capital project to tackle.

Some might say that our latest undertaking is a result of the high quality conversion the building went through in 2000-2001.

Others might say that because of the building’s age (100 + years) that this may be a part of regular maintenance.

At this point, only the professional opinion of our vendor(s) will decide which of the two theories is correct.

In the meantime we have to figure out how to finance the tuck pointing of our façade and the possible rebuilding of our front porches.

Jesus take the wheel.

While we’re almost done paying off the back porches, we have to turn our efforts to the next project.

After all we don’t want anymore bricks falling off of our building.

At our first 2008 association meeting, the subject was broached and based on preliminary estimates we can afford to get one side of our façade tuck pointed without raising assessments.

That’s preliminary good news.

I’m worried about if the estimate was wrong or costs spiral out of control. Then what are we going to do?

We’ve worked hard to get our shit together.

Between the self management, self lawn care and careful attention to the bottom line, we’ve made the magic happen.

Naturally we had to crack the whip about the lifeblood of any association---assessments.

Now we’ve got to worry about how to pay for possible latent defects as a result of our developer.

But as I said, only the vendors will be able to pinpoint the true cause of the façade issue.

Don’t think I won’t give you the 411 when the information is available.

I can only assume that I’ll be dreaming of masonry for the remainder of 2008.