With a neighbor like ours, who needs a GC?

Our next door neighbor, it turns out, really, I mean REALLY, enjoys house remodeling. His house, others' houses, our house. Example: He invited himself to our kick-off meeting with the architect, framer, electrician and helpfully chimed in with his 2-cents worth. Example: He came over and reviewed the demo work with me tonight, pointing out an area where he thought more concrete would need to be removed in order to pour the foundation.

He was the one who recommended his contractor/friend, the legally blind framer. I kept looking for another framer, thinking "How is a blind person going to frame a house??" Unfortunately, I was having a very, very, VERY hard time finding a framer. Turns out most framers are also GCs and they weren't interested in doing just the framing. They wanted to GC the whole project. Plus, we had entered the peak building period and any good independent framers were busy with other projects.

I was striking out left and right. This was the last piece of the puzzle, the last sub I needed to move ahead with our project; I was desperate. I called the blind framer.

What started out as an act of desperation is now turning out to be quite the fortuitous move. Because Bob and Ruben are such good friends, Bob thinks nothing of calling up Ruben to discuss our project. Example: This evening he called Ruben and confirmed with him that we would need to dig 14" out and 21" deep for the foundation. Then Bob left us a msg saying he would go over to the house first thing in the morning and let the demo crew know!!
DH and I were remarking how fortunate we are to have a neighbor who actually ENJOYS our remodeling project.