Notes from “Urgent Meeting” Called by Resident
ADDENDUM FROM MEETING CALLED BY RESIDENT ON SATURDAY 10/07/2017
The decks What happened / why a resident is Concerned:
As you all know, a resident already came to one of our meetings (August, I believe) and voiced their desire to have their deck returned to a clear-stained wood look. At that meeting we promised to have a vendor look at particle-blasting their deck to get back to the bare wood so it could be clear stained.
After our vendor found sandblasting too harsh for the wood’s condition (and told the resident he’d have to send for a finer material… and subsequently disappeared), we turned to Adam with Certapro to discuss the matter. After looking at the general condition of the community’s deck (I’m not sure if he looked specifically at the concerned resident’s deck or others), Adam joined us on a call in our September meeting to explain the lifetime of wood decks (~20 years), agreeing with the earlier vendor that wood of that age (20 years) would not hold up well to particle-blasting.
In summary, based on the age of the wood and the labor hour costs involved in restoring it back to the bare wood, we all agreed that it would be more worthwhile to replace the wood than to try and extend its lifetime through expensive labor.
Our decision in that meeting was this: 1. Because of the lateness of the season and the age of the deck wood, as well as the ongoing repairs being performed by Max at the time, we would move forward with minimal prep and recoating decks with a solid stain—with a plan to start phasing in replacement wood next year. We also assigned CMI to explain this to the concerned resident and discuss replacing thier deck now as a test unit before launching the phased replacements next year.*
Jim Nebeker tried to catch the concerned resident at home a few times but was unsuccessful (we need current contact info for everyone so can text, call, or email rather than knock doors and send letters). Meanwhile, Certapro began doing their basic prep on decks for the short-term solid stain job before next year’s wood-replacement program, and—though Jim told Certapro to not do the concerned resident’s deck, since we had other plans for it—Certapro did basic prep on the concerned resident’s deck that didn’t remove old stain to the bare wood. At that point, having not heard from us on our plans and seeing only basic prep work done, the concerned resident went to Clint Dalton’s house (after, apparently, talking with legal friends and also getting a bid on having his yard curbing replaced).
The curbing What happened / why resident is upset:
I’m running out of time here, so I’ll keep this one short.
We are 20 years old as a community.
Much of the curbing was cracked and uneven throughout the community.
Based on the recommendation of our new landscapers, Wasatch, rather then incurring massive expenses to replace all old curbing (an outdated style IMO anyway), we would implement a hard edge to our lawn (also called a soft edge or English Border edge) for easier maintenance, reduced costs, and a style that better matches our mixed colonial and Victorian rowhome architecture.
We communicated this change in a letter that was mailed out.
Where we/the landscaper has come up short is in smoothing the bed areas where curbing has been removed. Also (even though it was in a letter) we have come up short on communication (see note above about current contact info). So, unfortunately, the job does not look as good as it could—rather, in some places, it still looks like a curb was ripped out.
Because we haven’t smoothed beds, even though it has been on the agenda for months now,the resident is upset at the sight of his yard and also wants compensation for the price of curbing.
In discussions with the resident, I think we reached an agreement that, if we could get thier deck replaced as a test unit, they would give the landscaping some time and we’d revisit it later.
