Tag Archives: contractors

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It’s not a-door-able.

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The long awaited and apparently hard to find doors finally arrived.

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On a rainy day of course, so they were placed in the garage…

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Which is already filled to capacity with the yet to be installed windows and has become increasingly hard to maneuver with my car.

Not wanting to hit anything, we moved them to the bedroom the next day because that room is torn apart already.

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It’s not ideal, but I can stand it for a week until the contractor gets back to work.

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And in case you’re thinking, yay… glad that went smoothly, it actually didn’t.

I unequivocally told the contractor I wanted white painted doors.

He says he unequivocally told the supplier I wanted white painted doors.

These are not white painted doors.

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They’re primed with an off white, pale creamy color called ‘mill finish’ and are clearly ready for stain or paint with special trim tape in place around the glass.

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The contractor doesn’t like painting doors but I don’t care, he’s going to do it because we’re already over two months behind schedule on this simple stupid project and I’m ready to move on.

😡

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Finally!

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Thoroughly disgusted with everything about Hammond Lumber due to our ongoing window fiasco, we instructed our contractor never to buy anything from them for us again. This includes the back doors that poorly run excuse for a store couldn’t manage to find after 3 weeks of trying.

The mind boggles.

With those instructions… our poor, beleaguered, probably sick of us contractor went across town to another building supplier called Hancock Lumber and opened an account.

Within minutes they found the odd sized bedroom door with the decorative window we wanted in the correct size.

It’s a miracle!

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They actually laughed when told what an issue we’d been having with it.

And not only did they promptly order that door, but they had the full glass panel door with built in blind we need for the living room…the one that baffled the other place… on the display floor.

Another miracle!

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Our contractor was so thrilled he took photos and texted them to me.

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And that my friends is how it’s supposed to work.

You go to the store.

You tell them what you want.

They order it.

In a matter of minutes.

I’m not religious, but thank you Jesus!

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Oh, sure. We paid more than I expected…but the damn things will here in 10-14 days and with any luck will be installed before it snows.

Finally!

Some good news.

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You can’t make this stuff up.

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Well, alright you could.

But I’m not, I swear.

When last I blogged about the bedroom renovation project from Hell, we’d decided to throw in the towel and get a full refund on the faulty custom built windows. Our contractor was going to handle that for us since they were purchased through him on his account. It’s not the route I wanted to take, but something had to be done.

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Yeah, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

Our contractor attempted to get the refund and spent a half hour arguing with the sales rep before being bumped up to the manager who told him no refund could be made by the store until the Marvin window service expert approved it.

This is the expert for whom we’ve been waiting over three weeks and the reason my husband has smoke coming out his ears while he sputters about small claims court. They keep saying he’ll be here but he hasn’t shown yet.

After endless phone calls our contractor tentatively got a date to meet the service expert here and then… yes, you know there had to be a then…. then he had an unexpected death in the family and had to fly to Virginua.

Of course he did.

I expected nothing less.

Our contractor wants to be here because he knows if the expert tries to weasel out of a full refund they’ll blame him for faulty installation and he wants to defend himself. I want him to be here because while I know he tried everything to make the windows work… I don’t know exactly what steps he took.

So as it stands now… the expert is supposed to be here tomorrow, but our contractor won’t be, as his flight doesn’t get in until midnight.

I’m honestly hoping the expert is true to form and arrives a day or two late as I don’t want my husband to burst an artery arguing with the guy.

What a f’ing mess.

🥴

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Beam/ceiling repair project… the end? I don’t think so.

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Because if we didn’t have bad timing we wouldn’t have any at all , the last day our contractor was working on the ceiling project found us out of town… which meant we didn’t see the finished product until the next day. And while I’m pleased to have our living room back to normal without a plastic room in the middle of it…

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I’m not entirely pleased with the end result.

Yes, the section of ceiling that used to look like this….

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Certainly looks much better like this.

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And the beam that used to look like this..

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Is much smoother now.

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And while it’s wonderful not to see the sag in the middle of the room and worry that the roof could fall on our heads at any moment…

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There are two issues I’m not willing to accept.

While it’s true I knew the replacement popcorn wouldn’t exactly match the existing, I wasn’t expecting such a glaring line of demarcation.

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It’s very noticeable in spots and that just won’t do.

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The other issue is stain resolution. Years of slow roof leaks left us with random brown spots on one end and though our guy hit them with some sort of Kilz product and turned them white again…

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It’s a noticeably different white and drives me crazy every time I look up.

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Since our contractor is due to return in two weeks to install new windows and a door in our bedroom, a plan will be hatched to deal with the problems. He knew I wasn’t happy and because he’s probably going to be the one to lay our new flooring in the living room he suggested we wait until then and repaint the whole ceiling. That’s probably what should have been done in the first place but we both thought we could get away with not doing it. Which is what you get for thinking. Trying to save time and money with home repairs is fruitless and rarely works.

Is the beam solid and more structurally secure? Yes.

Does it look better than it did? Absolutely.

Does it still need some tweaking? I’m afraid so.

Sigh…

🥴

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Beam/ceiling repair project day 5… no more hole.

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Work continued on day 5, with the focus on prepping the surface for drywall.

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We have one of those stupid popcorn ceilings and I’m not lying when I say it makes a mess.

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But by the end of the day it was sufficiently scraped… and drywall covered the giant hole.

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By removing all those stupid little pieces of useless plywood the contractor found up there, he was able to give the beam a much lower and less defined profile than it had before .

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It’s still there, but no where near as deep, which is nice.

Next step will be mudding. (Which spellcheck just changed to muffins. You can never go wrong with muffins, but I don’t think they’d give us nearly the smooth finish we’re hoping for.)

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The end should be in sight now…

Though I know His Lordship is going to miss the plastic room.

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Beam/ceiling repair project, day 4… where a little snag was hit.

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Things started out well early that morning with Lord Dudley Mountcatten innocently gazing at the plastic room.

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Yes, I’m talking about you.

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He knows he’s not supposed to go in there, so of course it’s the only place he wants to be…

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And before long our smiling, happy contractor was busy replacing the insulation and installing strapping for the sheet rock.

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By mid afternoon he had both sides of the beam done…

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And the ceiling was ready for the next phase.

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Which is when he hit a snag.

Thankfully it wasn’t with the project per se, but when it started drizzling outside and he set up his saw in the garage to stay dry… things went a little haywire.

We love Tom. He’s a very clean and conscientious worker. So when he started cutting things in the garage, he turned on his shop vac to suck up the sawdust and splinters at the same time… but in doing so he also overloaded our sometimes squirrelly electrical system and knocked out power to the entire garage and part of my laundry room.

This resulted in a solid hour of trying to figure out why.

Thankfully Tom knows his way around electricity and after removing a few outlets, testing various circuits and doing a whole lot of other things I can’t explain…. he had it up and running again and would be able to resume work.

Until my husband came home a few minutes later and decided it was time to call it quits and consume adult beverages in the man cave.

No sheet rock was installed that day.

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But at least we had garage lights to illuminate our way home.

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Beam/ceiling repair project, day two…. good news is usually too good to be true.

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Our contractor started bright and early on day two but it turns out the good news from day one wasn’t all good.

No, the beam doesn’t need to be replaced but the overall support structure needs work which required a temporary load bearing wall to be built inside the plastic cave. .

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Turns out whoever built this addition back in ‘94 didn’t do a good job with the rafters.

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It’s hard to get proper pictures of the problem but things are separating and that’s not good.

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I’m no carpenter, but the fact that those tiny nails trying to grab onto the beam have been the only things holding up part of our living room roof was a little concerning.

The repair options were these:

1. Hire a structural engineer (at considerable cost) to come in and completely rip apart the entire addition roof, replace the beam and redo all the rafters and trusses.

Or….

2. Since the existing beam is solid (and has miraculously held everything in place for the past 30 years with virtually no support) have our contractor square everything, redo the rafter and truss supports, add heavy duty hangers, and make sure everything is properly secured.

Needless to say we chose door number two.

Since our contractor isn’t a structural engineer he can’t guarantee things won’t sag in another 30 years but realistically, my husband will probably be gone and I’ll be in an old folks home… so who cares?

🤣

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Work continues, in a very small space and in the pouring rain. It would be nice if the saws and power tools could be set up on the back deck but we’re having monsoon downpours right now.

It’s always something.

🥴

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Beam/ceiling repair project, day one… that’s what I call a mess.

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Work has begun on the ceiling repair/beam replacement project and yes, it’s a serious mess.

Things started slowly….

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And the dust barrier made for an interesting silhouette.

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Can’t say I’ve ever had a plastic wrapped room but if it saves me from dusting, I’m all for it.

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Inside the plastic cell, things were not as clean.

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Ceiling sections on both sides of the beam had to be removed …

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And if nothing else, it made me glad flooring replacement is next on the remodeling bucket list.

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Work for the day ended here with some good news for a change. At first glance the contractor doesn’t think the beam has been structurally damaged which means repairs would just be cosmetic. He’ll know more tomorrow when he starts ripping things apart, but the original shoddy construction did leave him puzzled.

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Numerous little pieces of plywood were nailed over the beam for no apparent reason.

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Once all that comes down he’ll do a thorough inspection to make sure everything is safe and hopefully get right to putting things back to normal.

My fingers are crossed. Not having to replace the beam will save a lot of time and money.

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As you can imagine, Lord Dudley Mountcatten was not pleased with today’s events and spent the entire afternoon under our bed.

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He did venture out at night to inspect the changes.

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And managed to wiggle his way under the plastic.

Cats.

They know no boundaries.

😉

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Finito! Well… almosto.

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The contractor is gone, for now… and the back deck work is finished.

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Well, almost finished.

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And while we now have steps and pretty white skirting….

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You have to be a little careful where you walk.

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Because our builder was slightly off on his calculations….

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And we’re still waiting for the three more boards that had to be special ordered.

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He’s promised not to charge for picking them up or installing them so it’s fine.

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Just be careful when you step out the back door.

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😊

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Deck replacement day 5… it looks like a deck!

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It’s been a long time coming, but things are finally starting to coalesce.

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I peeked out back at noon and saw almost half the deck boards had been laid.

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When the husband got home at 5:00pm, two thirds were done.

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Apparently with the help of a wooden mallet.

But because nothing ever goes smoothly here, it was then we learned the contractor had misjudged the width of the boards and would be two short at the end of the project. And since this is a special color no one keeps in stock, we’ll have to live with an unfinished deck for at least two weeks while we wait for the order to come in.

Sigh…

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But if I take a photo from this angle, I can pretend all is well.

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