Hey everyone. Back in February, I mentioned that I was working with my attorneys to see what legal action I could pursue because my contractor ran out on me. To date, I have filed a lawsuit against Floor to Ceiling’s parent company Preferred Brands, my contractor Richard Simoneau, Steven Harrington, a Floor to Ceiling franchisee, and other entities seeking to recover my losses. Preferred Brands and my attorney are attempting to reach a settlement of the action. Preferred Brands’ position is that my contractor Richard Simoneau was not an agent of theirs and that they have no liability for his actions.
Since the filing of the lawsuit we have obtained default judgments against Mr. Simoneau and Mr. Harrington and while both filed for bankruptcy protection, the judgments are not dischargeable because they are based on fraud.
I will definitely keep you posted as this develops further.
Every April 22nd millions of people around the world celebrate earth day through a series of festivals, activities, rallies and more all to promote public awareness of the environmental issues that our planet is faced with today. Check out Google’s beautiful Earth Day logo:
Earth day started in the 1960s when a small (but vocal) group of scientests and environmentalists became increasingly more concerned that things like pesticides, sewage an dindustrial pollutants were poisoning the air and water systems and threatening the integrity of the Earth. After awareness was growing and in the height of Vietname War protests, Senator Gaylord Nelson (an environmental advocate) thought – why not organize the same type of protest on behalf of the Environment? The idea for Earth day was Born.
Earth day has been credited with putting several environmental issues back on the political map and launching the environmental movement in the U.S. In 1990, Earth day became a global event and continues to grow in support and numbers today.
Today marks the first day that I decided to leave my car at home and bike to work from my new home. How appropriate :) Hopefully this trend will continue and I”ll log more bike than car hours from a commuting stand-point.
In other news my roommate and I are slowly settling in. We set up our recycling system and I hear Costco carries a great composting solution that I’m going to check out later today. Additionally now that the project is more or less complete I’m going to write a review on each person I used to build this house based on three scales – Price/ease to work with/quality of work. Hopefully I can get through a bunch this weekend so if any of you need recommendations for people to use you can use this site as a resource!
On Friday a group of students from the Bay Area Sustainable Building Advisor Program stopped by for a tour. The program they are involved in is a 9 month certificaiton course which at its completion will help them have a better understanding for key sustainable building practices, a thorough knowledge of LEED requirements and how they might apply to new construction or remodels and finally, a good sense for the cost benefit analysis in sustainable design. Ann Edminster had linked the group up with me because they had already seen a LEED for homes project in Petaluma which had barely broken ground and wanted to contrast it with what a completed LEED home might look like.
(From top left to bottom right) Mark Lane, Lisa Arrowood, Kay Vanderhave, and Debra Van Duynhoven, Rebecca Valentine, Prakash Chandran
The group met me in the morning and we walked through the house talking about all the different green measures I had taken and the reasons for doing so. It was nice going through the house with them because they gave me some ideas of things I might consider doing for the next project and they also gave me a heads up on some things I should currently be thinking about like dsireusa.org. This website is a comprehensive list of state incentives that are available for many sustainable building practicies. I hope they also got what they needed out of the visit!
It seems like the SBA offers a great program in giving people a good overview of sustainable design practicies and philosophies. Check out the website for more information!
After a lot of hard work from everyone I’ve finally obtained the certificate of occupancy for the house which means I can start moving in :) I actually acquired this on April 8th, 2009 but I wanted to wait a few days to make sure there were no last minute “gotcha suckers” or hoops I had to jump through. It feels good to sleep in my house!
