Coordination and Teamwork

I am the General Contractor on the church renovation. On Friday, after we closed, I went to the Village of Coxsackie offices and applied for a building permit. Yesterday I received a call from the building inspector, Chris Larsen, who expressed his concern that the church was an architectural gem that had been languishing for a couple of years and his hope that I would be restoring it. I assured him that my first order of business would be to make the structure healthy and energy efficient. He asked me to send him a list of my subcontractors (so he could make sure everyone is legit and insured) and would get back in touch with word about the building permit.
David, my carpenter, and I already did a little work tearing down walls and demolishing the crappy landlord special kitchen cabinets. That was a fun couple of days that mostly went like this:
David: "What are you doing?"
Gail: "Taking this door off the hinges."
David: "Stop." (and then he instructs me that I am removing the door from the wrong side and when the last screw comes out the door would fall on my head)
David gave me an assignment to tear down the wall behind the refrigerator while he took the day off. He called me just as I was finishing up:
David: "Is the church still standing?"
And so it goes...
Here's what's happening this week:

The chimney on the east wall comes down. It's not attached to a working fireplace and it needs to be removed so I can open up the back of the house with two sets of sliding doors (nice ones with wood frames) on the ground floor and one set of french doors can be put in the second floor bedroom loft. We are stacking the bricks and figuring out how we might repurpose them.

The site has to be cleaned up of all this junk and dead leaves to prepare the tree guys to do their job.

On Thursday, LB tree service is coming to remove these seven maple trees on the south side of the house that are compromising the structure. It will be weird to see the house a little naked and lose some of the dappled sunlight but ultimately, the house will be drier and cleaner without them. It's a tricky job as the trees are right up on the structure and my neighbor's beautiful house (they closed on their property a month ago) is very close as well. But LB assures me that they will do the job and leave me with cords of firewood for the woodstove.

I leave for Los Angeles tomorrow morning and return on Friday night. I pray I don't receive any troubling phone calls while I'm away! I'll come up on Saturday morning to review the work and take new pictures. It's haaaaapppppennnnning!