When we arrived at the house, my first thought was that the neighbors must hate me. There were construction trucks everywhere, and you could hear heavy equipment running in the back. We pulled into a full-on construction zone.
Before I got overwhelmed, they took us inside the house, where they’d taken over an area as a staging center. They had artist’s renderings of what was planned tacked to the walls. Cindy explained it to my family.
“The idea is to give everything an overall Tuscan-inspired feel with three main goals: a home to accommodate David’s extended family, a place to relax, and a place to entertain.”
I zoned out a bit as I took in what I was seeing.
“… and the tennis court …”
“What tennis court?” I asked.
“I forgot; that was supposed to be a surprise,” Cindy said.
I remembered her asking if anything was missing and me jokingly saying that we needed a tennis court. Based on the plans, I didn’t see where they could put one with the space being eaten up by the garage/apartment/security center at the back of the property.
“We figured out that we could put it on the roof of the garage,” Professor Donaldson explained.
Yep, I already knew how Coby would die. He would climb the stairs to get to the third story where the tennis court was, scale the twelve-foot fence surrounding it, and plunge to his death. Then again, knowing him, Coby would bounce and not have a mark on him.
If he didn’t die, Duke might. I could see the boys hitting balls over the fence and my hound bounding down the stairs to rescue them. After a couple of trips, he would be worn out.
Barring those impending catastrophes, I loved it.
I also had the realization that the garage was going to be huge if its footprint was large enough to accommodate a tennis court.
Turned out, I didn’t need to decide anything. That was what my grandmother, aunt, and Lexi were there for. While they took care of that, Uncle John, Fritz, and I accompanied the dean to see the construction.
“You know I might have to kill you,” Uncle John said.
“Why? What did I do now?” I asked.
“You saw Bonnie. She’s going to want to redo the farmhouse after seeing this.”
“Don’t blame me. She told me she married you for your money,” I teased.
Dean Lloyd took us to the back of the property, where they were putting in the foundation for the multipurpose garage, security hub, apartments, and now a tennis court.
“Buildings are designed to support a vertical load, including the floors, roof, and all the stuff inside, against the pull of gravity. Earthquakes present an interesting problem. Seismic waves cause horizontal movement that will push a building off its foundation regardless of the advanced engineering techniques employed,” he explained.
“That’s troublesome,” Uncle John said.
“It can be a real problem with bigger and taller buildings, mainly because the sideways movement will cause the building’s own inertia to topple it. One solution is called ‘base isolation.’ Basically, the building floats on systems of ball bearings, springs, and padded cylinders. Together they act like a shock absorber that negates the shaking of the ground.”
“You said bigger and taller buildings,” I prodded.
“We may have overengineered this building just a bit,” he admitted.
“At what cost?” I asked.
“What does peace of mind cost?” Dean Lloyd asked.
“Sounds like a big number,” Uncle John quipped.
“It added three percent to the budget.”
“And this is beyond the building code requirements?” Uncle John asked.
“Yes.”
“Total budget, or the budget for just this building?” I asked.
Dean Lloyd flinched.
“Good catch,” Uncle John said. “That’s the danger in letting academic types run a project. They want to try the newest gadgets or techniques, which may not be the soundest financially. They don’t have to make a profit and are spending your money, not theirs.”
Dean Lloyd’s face colored at that observation. To his credit, he didn’t refute it. All that kept me from being upset was that I knew Jack Mass had been involved. If this were truly egregious, he would have put a stop to it. I would talk to him before I got upset. It also told me that if I let them do more projects, I would have to hire someone like Jack to oversee them.
“So, it will be safer?” I asked.
“Yes. I would expect it will also save you money on insurance,” he said to throw me a bone.
As we worked our way back to the house, it looked like a bomb had gone off around the pool area. They’d taken the roof off the pool house because they planned to add a second story. The contractor was in the process of jackhammering out the pool deck, and the pool had been drained so it could be resurfaced.
If I hadn’t seen the drawing of what this area was going to be, I would have been worried. I’d sent Cindy pictures of the pool area at L’Horizon Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, and she planned to incorporate some of those features. To the side of the pool, they’d dug a big hole. I assumed it was for the hot tub.
