After all the stress of this experience, there’s no way anyone will budge me from the giant wooden house as long as I’m still breathing.
People ask us every day – “How’s the house going?”. Until this week, the answer has been “Great!” Not so much now. I think I see now why so many people that I talk to who have built say that they’ll never do it again.
I was so excited last week that things were finally going to start going into the house. We spent Sunday afternoon buying all the tile and supplies, with tile guy and company in tow. We had everything loaded on their trailer so they could begin tiling the 2 bathrooms and laundry room first thing Monday morning. We went to the house Monday afternoon, and some concrete board stuff had been laid on the floors (some of them). Went back Tuesday evening, nothing had been done. We called Daniel-the-Builder to ask what was going on. He didn’t know. After a bit (I’m sure after D-t-B called him) tile guy called us and said they had spent the day sanding our sub-floors. No, not the sub-floors in the rooms they were to tile. IN THE REST OF THE HOUSE! HUH?????????? Then he asked Mike when the trim is going to be there to be installed around the windows and doors…HUH??????????
We had to have a discussion with D-t-B and tell him that we don’t know why tile guy took it upon himself to do something we didn’t hire him to do, but that we aren’t paying for anything other than what he was hired for, and as far as the trim…BACK OFF! He’s not doing the trim! ARGGGG!!
Now on to cabinet guy. We met with cabinet guy 2 weeks ago at the house with D-t-B. We provided computer generated drawings of each cabinet that we wanted. He took the drawings, called back with a cost for the cabinets and countertops in a couple of days, and we told him to go ahead and order. He called yesterday and said he’s ready to start installing today. Now…back to the first meeting…and this is important…when we looked at the sink cabinet we said “the sink is an apron sink”. Cabinet guy said “an apron sink, what’s that?” Yep, that’s what he said. To which D-t-B replied, “Yeah, you know…and went on to describe it to him. Then he said to him “you need to go to the store where they are keeping it for them and look at it, make sure you know what you need for it”. Cabinet guy says “OK”. Today we met cabinet guy and D-t-B at the house to tell him where the island will be placed. I said – “Oh, come look at the apron sink, because it looks to me like that cabinet you have for it is wrong…there’s a front in it for one thing.” Cabinet guy looks at the sink and says…”Huh? I’ve never seen one of those.”
I won’t go through all the gory details of the next hour, where at one point cabinet guy told me one of my options was to get a different sink. What???? I picked that sink out and built this giant wooden house around it dude, no way!!!!! He says there’s no apron sink cabinet in this series, and if we have one custom done it’s not going to match our others that have a glazed finish…blah, blah, blah. At least once during the conversation D-t-B told him he should have gone to look at the sink like he suggested, so figure it out. They finally decided to build reinforcement in the existing cabinet and cut the front out and assured me it will look great. We’ll see.
So, tonight we drove up to see how much progress they made today.
1) Tile guys had piled concrete backer board stuff into our bath tub in the second bath. One scratch is all it will take. If there’s one scratch, someone else buys a new tub and has it installed, and it’s not us. Unreal.
2) Cabinet guys. The double oven cabinet (reg oven below and micro/convection oven above) is not that at all. It’s just a one oven cabinet.
We have a call into D-t-B.
We’re stressed. I’m in an eating frenzy. Mike and I managed to get through today without getting mad at each other, which is better than yesterday, but we’re ready to fire tile guy and company and not so sure about cabinet guy and company. Maybe we’ll calm down when we talk to D-t-B. IF he calls soon.
Oh yeah, I love this…tile guy gave us an estimate for painting the interior of the house. LIKE WE WOULD LET SOMEONE LOOSE WITH A PAINT ROLLER IN OUR HOUSE THAT HAS CABINETS INSTALLED THAT DOESN’T KNOW ANY BETTER THAN TO PILE CONCRETE BACKER BOARD INTO A BRAND NEW BATHTUB?????!!!!!!!
We’ll be painting. We just want everyone out of our house as soon as possible, and we’ll finish up. As soon as the tile and cabinets are done, we’re finished with contractors with the exception of the electricians, plumbers and heating/cooling guy coming back to hook everything up.
So, a long, ‘uninteresting to anyone but us’ post, but I actually feel better.
Now, to go find food…
Smith Funny Farm 