My nephew is building a house near mine. The subdivision was platted in the 1930s and 90 years later remains barely half built out. His house is a building boom.  The woods and the topography are such that to get from my place to his isn’t a direct shot despite sharing a boundary line. It ’s far enough away that I don’t see it, but close enough that I hear the construction. More than the usual construction noise of back-up beepers and hammering, what stands out are the musical choices. The house is moving at a weird schedule. The framer is way behind, and the other subs are starting to show up even though things aren’t entirely ready for them.  I’m not sure what the framer’s issue is. Some days, he’s there alone, which says a lot about the progress. Other days he has a small crew with him and they get a little more done.  On the days he’s there alone, the soundtrack is a dark, sad corner of the country music world. It’s the my-wife-left-and-took-my-truck genre. No wonder nothing gets done. A couple of hours of that and you want to curl up in a corner and weep into your cold gas station burrito. It’s the soundtrack to a suicide.  When the rest of his crew is there, it’s slightly more upbeat, but still not exactly Bob Wills Texas swing. Asleep at the Wheel would pick up the pace and improve the mood. The plumbers are into rap. The other day it was a broad selection of rap’s finest artists, each shouting the f-word over a skull-cracking bass.  I walk over there every day just to see what’s happening and give the dog a walk. The dog was frightened by the rap songs and refused to go inside even though he knows there is lunch spillage on the floor. But they will have the whole f-ing house f-ing rough plumbed in a couple of f-ing of days. The HVAC guys are into Christian rock, which is almost as annoying as the soul-sucking country. They are not as efficient as the plumbers, and in fact, the two trades seem determined to undo as much of the other’s work as possible. You can’t put a duct there; I need it for a drain line. And your sewer pipe is right where I need to run the ducts to the bedrooms and has to be moved. Back and forth. No shots fired. Yet. Although the electricians aren’t on the site yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start blasting opera. The roofers, should the framer actually emerge from his despair and get the roof sheathed, will surely have a mariachi vibe unless ICE has them so intimidated they are playing John Phillip Sousa marches or a medley of nice German polkas. It’s supposedly the job of the general contractor to keep all of the various trades carefully choreographed and on schedule so the kitchen cabinets don’t show up before there is an actual kitchen in the house.  I don’t think his job duties include acting as musical director for the project. The guys on site have to work that out themselves. There must be some established protocol.  For a while, they tried a kind of time-share approach, with everybody getting an hour of programming. But the ultimate compromise appears to have been turn it all off. It was dead silence over there the last time I stopped in. I’m not sure anybody was happy about it, but they worked it out. Even on the scale of a normal-sized house, construction is complicated. Although it’s a kind of hostile entry experience to Deer Valley going through the East Village construction zone, it’s fascinating to watch.  There are seven tower cranes in a very tight area. Somebody negotiated the exact elevation of each one so they can swing their booms without smacking into each other. Still, I don’t think they can really move anything without coordinating with the crew on the ground and the crane on the building next door. It’s flying along. It’s interesting how the speed of projects can differ. There are two spec houses in Francis that started after my nephew’s place but already have shingles on and windows installed, while his house still has the moon roof open.  The Grand Hyatt started long after the still-framing high-rise condo project that looms over Empire Lodge, and was open for business for their second Christmas season. I suspect they will be redecorating the Hyatt in a beiger shade of beige before there is a certificate of occupancy on the condo at Empire.  I’m sure there are reasons (poor choice of playlists, unexpected mine shaft in the basement?), but the disparity in schedules is striking.  There’s also that house at the top of the Homestake chair that never seems to progress, or the one next door to it that has been under continuous remodeling since it was built in the 1990s.  It will be nice, some day in the future, when the town is “finished” and nobody is digging up streets or bulldozing school buildings or county libraries that are newer than any school I ever went to. Until then, keep your hardhat and steel-toed boots ready, and learn to compromise on the playlist so we can work together. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. The post More Dogs on Main: Construction site playlist appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less