A crowning achievement

Today was a pretty good day. A REALLY good day, actually.

We found a contractor named Jose from Golden Touch Painting through our dear friend Ashley, who could not speak highly enough about him. We met with Jose a couple times last week, and he was a really cool guy. He's just one of those people that you instantly like when you meet him. The best part of the whole thing is, they have a crew. Which is pretty freaking thrilling, considering that Andrea and I are used to one guy puttering around the place doing what he can or what he feels like doing. Those days are now over.

Jose and his crew are completing everything that isn't electrical. Finishing up the kitchen, hooking up the disposal, doing the backsplash, finishing the bathroom, doing all the trim for the entire house. They started this morning at around 9am. We came back at around 5 and pretty much all the crown molding, baseboard, quarter round, and beadboard trim is in place. Doors too. It looks absolutely amazing. I can't tell you how much better crown makes a room look. So, I'll show you. They say they are going to be done by Tuesday, which totally blows my mind. Given the amount of progress they made today, I have no choice but to believe them.

Meanwhile, Waylyn Morgan is doing the electrical for the whole house (probably a familiar name for those of us who are South Cobb alumni.) He's been pretty great so far, and I'm really glad we got an actual electrician to redo our old wiring. There were a lot of potential pitfalls we could have fallen into and never known about. There was a lot of incorrect wire that had been run (thanks, former contractor!), oven wire was too small for current appliances, two prong outlets everywhere, not to mention the fuse box itself was both too small and a complete mess. All of that is fixed now, and he's also doing the rest of our lighting for us. So far we have recessed cans up in the master bedroom now, kitchen is coming soon. I really can't wait to see what the kitchen will look like all lit up; we'll have four different kinds of lighting in there. Recessed cans, pendant lights over the island and sink, under-cabinet lights, and LED strips just under the toekick.

So, we're busting our budget for labor like whoa. But I think it's worth it, since this thing is actually going to be finished next week before Thanksgiving. I don't think that has quite sunk in yet.

Here comes the BACKspLASH. Was that a good one, Nate?

So the team of three contractors we brought in for an estimate gave us the estimate.  Steep.  Lots steep.  We're gonna try with a couple other folks that friends have referred to us, but time is such a stressful factor here.  Couple days to get somebody in there, an hour of eating crow while we look over HOW MUCH was left unfinished, and then a day or two to wait for an estimate.  Assuming they can start right away.
So we're also going to go over the list and see if we can bring these guys in to do the jobs they gave us fair prices on and find others to do the rest.  Scrambling for solutions, that's the phrase I'm gonna use.
They quoted us $380 to install the backsplash.  This backsplash right here.

 



Hot secks, right?
And while I'm DYING to see this stuff actually up on the wall, for $380 . . . I can distinctly remember Nathan talking about how he was so excited to install it himself.  Yep, definitely remember that.

I hit a high point yesterday with the stress.  Today's a lot better.  I'm starting to really adjust to the fact that, at best, we'll be moving IN around Thanksgiving.  Not exactly settled or cooking dinner for anyone just yet.

But this year will be the happiest Christmas party we've ever thrown.  And in the meantime, I'm gonna try and enjoy the holidays no matter what else gets chucked at us. 

"For next time."

Hah, Nathan.  Right.
I'm about convinced that I'm gonna have babies in this house just so I won't have to move and do this all over again any time soon.

Don't believe that though, Clay and Paula.  We still want y'all to come over sometime before Christmas and look this place up and down.

Square one

Although I couldn't be there this morning due to work-related reasons, Andrea met with a contractor this morning and we are now waiting on a quote. The guy has a crew and would be able to pretty much finish everything in less than two weeks starting Monday: that's including the kitchen, bathroom, and all the trim. Not sure when we're going to have a chance to tackle the master bathroom, because that will be a huge task in and of itself.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the quote will come in around what I am thinking it will. It will definitely be way more than what we planned to spend on labor, but at this point we are simply out of time and are going to pay if we're going to get to live there in any reasonable timeframe. But hopefully the promise of future jobs and/or paying in cash will help us negotiate a good deal.

In any case, there's a deceptively large amount of work to be done because there are simply so many loose ends. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Jeff never actually finished anything. Definitely a lesson to keep in mind for next time.

Room and BOARD? HUH? HUH???

A few quick pictures of the baseboards - the bits that are up, anyway.  Nate can talk about the installation process; all I know is that it required a bunch of trips to Home Depot.

Little sneak peek at the floors, too - though they're dusty at the moment from cutting all that trim.

Backsplash pictures soon.  It's not tiled, but we got all the tiles in and I stuck a couple up against the wall to see what it'll look like.

Prettttttty excited about that one.

 

So. Where to begin?

Nate was right, that was the worst move ever.  A weekend of 10-13 hour days.  I'm really proud of us, we DID IT.  But I never want to do it again.  Hah.

The real story, for now (and then I'll follow with some happy updates about doors and paint and floors and trim and backsplashes), is our contractor.  He's now our former contractor.
And let's discuss why.

This is our first experience with renovation, obviously.  And on the whole, we've been pretty damn lucky.  I'm just beginning to believe that contractors are a headache no matter who you deal with - and it's making HGTV painful to watch at the moment.

Our guy was really affable, pleasant, blah blah blah.  In the beginning, we were completely grateful for the work he was doing, the advice he was giving, and the price he was charging.
And then that changed.
A favor is a favor when it's actually done.  And we started demolition in, what, August?  The bulk of construction was in the kitchen and the main bathroom.  And guess what?  The kitchen's not finished, and the bathroom's not finished.  The fact that any work is done in the bathroom at all was thanks to me, Nathan, Jerry, and Nate's mama.  Jerry tiled that gorgeous floor.  That's about all that's done. 
And we're bitter. 
The guy obviously had other jobs he was working, and when they slowed down he gave us priority.  When there was other work, nothing got done over here.  Nothing.  We'd ask for timelines or dates, we'd get "oh yeah sure, no problem"s at every question.  Then those changed into "well, we'll see"s.
It started to get tense a week or two ago, and then it came to a head last Friday when we went to the house and saw that drawers weren't in some cabinets (excuses), HANDLES weren't put on cabinets or drawers (no excuse), the sink wasn't connected (excuses, if I remember right), and there was an insane amount of clutter and mess everywhere.

We'd spent a full day moving that clutter and mess out of the living room so the flooring guys could get in to sand and stain the hardwoods.  And they did!  They did it quickly, they did it correctly, they did it nicely, and they worked hard.  For a VERY fair price.
You get frustrated when you see what you CAN have from vendors.

Nate called our GC and kept asking when we would have a finished kitchen.  Evasive answers every time.  So we kept asking.  Finally the dude says, "are you really asking me that again?"

Oh yes.  Yes we are. 
Because you SAID it would be done by the end of the week.  It's Friday.  It ain't done.
And then he tells us that we should be "doing handsprings" over the fact that he's coming over on Sunday to do work.

Long story short, he didn't come over on Sunday.  When I started telling him that we're not ungrateful, we're just following through on previously set expectations, he plays that "favor" card again.  Listen. 
HE quoted us a price, HE knew (despite all the wonderful little ways he found to stall) the work that needed to be done in there MUCH better than we did, and HE said we'd be wrapping up at the end of October.  You can equivocate as much as you want, but it's BS.  If you wanted to get the work done, it'd be done.  Like my pop says - work at 1 am on a Tuesday, work at 9 am on a Friday, work whenever - just WORK.  It's amazing how much we got done when we worked in there with Jerry and Lisa in just a couple DAYS.

So no, no favor has been done here.  Quite the opposite - now we get to scramble to find a contractor who will finish the mess that's been left for us in a couple weeks.  Because I don't want to spend Thanksgiving living in limbo. 
He got pissy and said, "well when you're ready to talk to me like I'm somebody, you can give me a call."
The SUPER FUNNY thing is, we WERE talking to him like he was somebody.  Like an adult.  Like a contractor.  Like someone who does this for a living.  Like a professional.

So.  No more calls.  We're going to bring other folks in, and we're going to get it done.  And I'm going to eventually let go of being angry.  Eventually.
Assuming it's par for the course when you're dealing with GCs, but it's still absolutely no fun.  Though I have to say, a giant weight's been lifted off our shoulders just by knowing we don't have to put up with the condescension and the stalling any longer. 

Looking ahead, moving forward, yadda yadda.  Next updates will be happy ones.

Trimming your expectations

Things have taken a turn for the worse, or better, depending on your perspective.

On Friday night we decided that we had had enough with our contractor's runarounds. He would never give us a firm date on anything. On Tuesday when he got back in town he said he could finish the kitchen and bathroom by the end of next week "no problem". That forecast got less and less optimistic with each day, with "no problem" being replaced with, "we'll see" "let's see what happens". This is after he said he was going to come over and work all day Friday, but somehow only managed to get water lines to the fridge and dishwasher hooked up. Then he even said that we ought to be doing back flips because he was going to come over Sunday and work all day. When Andrea pointed out that he hadn't finished what he said he was going to finish yet, he got offended and basically said that he was done until we can talk to him like he's somebody.

Somebody. Somebody we're paying to do work for us, supposedly as a favor. It's not exactly a favor if the work isn't getting done. We are just in need of some honesty; if you can't get the work done, then let us know so we can find someone who will. We're already behind schedule, this thing was supposed to be done two weeks ago. So, we're done with him and there is not even a need for a final confrontation since we're paid up to this point already. I feel like a call to him at this point would be akin to surrender, and it's not as if there aren't plenty of people out there looking for work.

So now we're left with a mostly-finished kitchen minus a functioning sink and a few cabinet doors, and a bathroom with no plumbing (but a very nice tile floor.) We've got some leads, so hopefully some of them will bear some fruit soon. We were hoping that the house would be move-in ready by the end of the week, and that prospect is now looking pretty uncertain. If we can find someone in the next day or so, we should be fine. All it really needs is someone working there 8 hours a day until the end of the week. I'm feeling somewhat optimistic about it at this point, but I'm trying to try to look at our situation in a day to day sense to not get overwhelmed. This was a pretty tough pill to swallow so late in the game; I wish things had come to a head earlier, but there is nothing we can do about it now.

Meanwhile, we're doing what we can. We've officially started doing trim, and we're gonna order doors today. We splurged and bought really tall 7.25" baseboards and we're really excited about it. We started putting some down yesterday but couldn't really do much of it since we're going to have to wait and see how big the door casings are. But so far it looks absolutely fantastic. I'll try to have a man update about that at some point, time permitting.

That's it for now. Hopefully things will look a lot different by the end of the week than they do at the moment.

Worst move ever.

Sorry we've gone dark lately. We just finished dealing with a hellish move over the weekend, but now it's finally finished. Well, the packing the POD part at least. It took three days, which clocked in around 12-13 hours apiece. Not the best weekend we've ever had.

Next on the agenda is getting settled at our temporary home in the in-law suite at mom's house, processing everything that's happened, and finishing the house hopefully in the next couple weeks. The hardwoods are getting refinished as we speak and so far they look fantastic. We chose "coffee brown" for the stain. It's amazing how much it brings out the wood grain. I can't wait to see the final result.

The mortgage is almost ready too. Once the kitchen and bathroom are finished we can get the appraiser out and close very shortly thereafter.

So hopefully everything will get knocked out soon and we can get out of this holding pattern. We'll have a more substantive update later.