That's what we get for thinking

...We're finally able to leave the job site to the contractors and take a few days off...

...We should give up some of the control and trust our 'people'...

...We are so close to the end of the project we can almost see it and taste it...

What happens when we get complacent?

We walk in to what was supposed to be a little demo of a few badly damaged walls of plasterboard in preparation for the drywall going up...

Our drywall sub avoids us and asks our contractor (in Spanish, as if I cannot translate), "Are they mad?"...

I am so shocked that my anger reaction is crushed by the sheer weight of the 100 tons of plasterboard that are strewn throughout my GUTTED home!

Let me back up a bit...In ANY project, we do this 'wrestling match' between what choices to make throughout the process. In this house, one of our first conversations was about removing all the plaster board. We wanted to - which is good because it makes it easier for me to deal with the current state of things without feeling the need to take my own life in despair.

We decided not to. That decision was frustrating to the electricians. It probably added about $700 to their time and many loud expletives as they tried to fish wires.

Then somebody else came in and makes that decision for us - two months after we were waffling on it ourselves.

It's not that I am mad. I know the end result will be better. It's that I feel betrayed. It was our decision to make. Nobody called.

OK. I take it back. I AM MAD. I am paying a contractor a significant sum of money to manage this project. The one day boz needs a break from the site, the contractor was asked to be there. He went in and out. No call. No opportunity for us to make this decision, at least tipped off by our partner.

Our subs - These are new folks we are working with. There is potential for many, many more jobs together. Yet no call to come over when the work begins. And I don't recall ever having a conversation about how much this demo work will cost. Certainly never signed anything that said it was happening to this extent.

I slept on it and had a chance to calm down and work out in my head that this makes the finished product much nicer and in my heart I wanted it to happen anyway. Now I am just mad that they

• removed three door frames that I now have to pay to replace
• broke a window so badly that it will need to be rebuilt
• put about $10,000 worth of appliances in jeopardy by not protecting them with cover

And I am more mad that this means no more breaks for us, as we clearly need to be there to affect these decision that are going to cost us so dearly.