Oh. Hey, y'all!
Has it really been 3 weeks since I wrote something on here? I've been kind of busy, yo.
So 3 weeks ago I told y'all I was having a bunch of work done to my house. (Again.) I had my deck refinished last June and huge chunks of the paint (it's not really a normal paint - it's stuff meant to restore old decks) had started coming off. My contractor looked at it and said he's used the same product on other decks and has never had that happen so he would re-do it for free. He has been more than fair on a ton of stuff he's done on my house so I told him since it's not his fault, I would pay for the product if he would provide the labor at no charge because I didn't want to take advantage of him. (I think this was a good move because he then gave me a really good deal on something else that happened which I will tell you about in a minute). So on the Wednesday before Easter, he and his crew came out to spend the day working at my house and one of them repainted my deck. And on Easter morning, my mom's husband went out to blow my deck off because I had 25ish people coming over, and chunks of the finish blew off again. Sigh. So my contractor came back out again yesterday and worked on it some more at no charge to me. And how much do I hate my deck right now? A lot.
I also had to have my front door replaced. Did I already tell you I had gone through 3 deadbolts in 2 years and my contractor discovered my front door was the wrong size, was probably an interior door, the door frame was not done correctly, the door was sagging and out of alignment, etc.? Well, when he took the old door down and then took the frame out to re-do it, he discovered that all underneath my door, the wood was rotted out from water damage. And the frame halfway up the wall was rotted out from water damage. So he spent two and a half days putting in my new door because he had to replace all of that.
I trust him with my life so I leave him there when I'm not home because I would hardly work a day in my life if I had to stay home every single time something was wrong with my house. He has the code to open my security gate and to get in my garage. And one evening he called me and said his whole day had gotten off schedule and even though it was 7:00 he was still going to come to my house and get a couple of hours of work done. I was standing in the middle of the grocery store when he called and a marching band had just come in, played a little song and left (for real) and I told him I would be home within an hour and would see him when I got there. Not 15 minutes later, the guy who just installed my security cameras and gates called me and said, "Beverly! There are some guys at your house! Do you know there are guys at your house? I just saw them on my phone!" I had been having some issues with the DVR and he and the camera company had been working on my equipment remotely that day and he just happened to log on to make sure everything seemed to be working when Tim had shown up. So I told him, "Oh yeah, that's Tim that you met," because these past few weeks I've had so much crap being done to my house that my contractors have been meeting and exchanging business cards with each other on my front porch. Anyway, once I got off the phone with my contractors and finished my grocery shopping, I went home and I was standing on the front porch talking with Tim while he was working on the front door and I noticed when he stepped right inside the front door, I could see the floor of my entryway kind of sag down and I decided that was probably not a good thing and was probably an expensive thing and I was right on both accounts.
So the day before Easter and the day before I had 25 people coming to my house, he and his crew were at my house cleaning out gutters, installing gutter guards, finishing up insulation work, and he was still working on my door. He and his guys went up under my house and came back out with a beautiful picture. It was a picture of one of the main support beams under my house which sits on top of the foundation and holds up a bunch of other support beams and it was also completely rotted out from water damage. I said, "Oh crap, Tim. How much are we talking to fix this?" and he said, "Miss Beverly, I don't even want to go there because it's going to make you want to cry. But I'm trying to think of a less expensive way to fix it."
About 20 minutes later, he came in and said, "Okay. Here's the deal." Whenever someone says "here's the deal" I always know bad news is probably coming. "To do this the technically correct way, we need to jack your house up, remove that beam and replace it. And that would be about $6,000." And I almost fainted on the floor. "BUT! We're going to do it not technically the correct way, but it will still fix the problem. It's simply a much more cost effective way." My mom's husband was standing there and I'm glad because what he told me they were doing made no sense whatsoever to me, but my mom's husband said it did to him and it should fix the problem just fine and last for another 100 years. But most importantly he told me that if I had called him out just for that one issue, he would charge me $1,500 but since he knew all of the crap I've been through with my house since he's fixed the majority of it, and he knows how much money I've spent, and he knows I'm one of his excellent customers and he knows that I'm going to have 500 more things break in my house that I'll call him for and because he was already at my house doing a few thousand dollars worth of work on other stuff, he would only charge me $1,000 to do whatever it is he did to shift the weight of my entire house.
And that's a little story about how the day before I had 25 people coming to my house I ended up having guys on my roof, guys in my crawl space, guys finishing up a new front door, and guys shifting the weight of my house so it won't cave in.
I'm going to try to write again tomorrow. Pinky swear! Tonight I'm going to go try to buy YET MORE SHOES to try and help my stupid feet.
(I haven't even had time to proof this so probably lots of typos and mistakes.)
I will attest to, it is soooo nice when you trust your contractor and your contractor sounds very ethical and sincere and fair! Huge sigh of relief, he will not take advantage of you! Please write again soon....I miss your posts and stories!!!!
ReplyDeleteI will try to write this afternoon!
DeleteHow long have you been in your house? That is a scary repair to hear about. I'm surprised that wasn't caught when you bought it. Unless it's all recent damage. But it must be nice to have a trusting contractor. I'm always so leery. Would love to have someone like that.
ReplyDeleteI moved in Halloween weekend of 2011. My inspector told me he had some concerns with the wood near the front door. I had different contractors that did a ton of work when I first moved in the house. They looked at it and didn't seem too concerned. I trust them too, and I imagine it has simply gotten worse since I first moved in. Whenever we get a huge amount of rain, I have a small lake on my front porch right in front of my front door which is where all of the damage was. I try to keep it swept off, but I don't always. My current contractor suggested the gutter guards because I have tons of huge hardwood trees in my surrounding neighbors yards which have limbs hanging over my house and my gutters stay full of leaves and overfill. He's hoping the gutter guards will cut down on how much water gets on my porch. It's the cheapest option of a few suggestions he had so we're trying it first. If it doesn't work, I may end up having to have tile put on my porch so they can slope it slightly and keep water running off the porch instead of up to my front door.
DeleteMy house is almost 100-years-old and it just has a lot of issues. I love old houses, but I don't know that I would ever buy one again.
That is a keeper of a contractor!
ReplyDeleteI feel for ya--3 weeks after we closed on the house and now they're finally starting to replace the roof (thank you Renovation Loan!) before they move onto the exterior, some masonry columns under the back part of the house, and replacing the floors in both bathrooms, the kitchen, and the laundry room. When we camped out the first weekend after closing we discovered a massive pipe leak under the house (how that got missed in 4 inspections is beyond me, but we have a theory) and we still don't have hot water (part's in for the water heater, we just have to wait for a free weekend to replace it).
Good luck!
And good luck to you too!
DeleteWhen I first moved in, I had to have a renovation loan as well because I had to do about $27,000 worth of work just to make the house in livable condition.
One part of that was to have the sub-floor replaced under one of my bathrooms because it had completely rotted out and you could see the bottom of the bathtub when you were in the crawl space. There was nothing holding it in! My house was a foreclosure so I really had no information on it other than stuff my inspector found. I rarely use that shower, but one of my water heaters went out (when I had 4 visitors in my house for the weekend OF COURSE) and we were using it because the two downstairs bathrooms had hot water while the two upstairs did not. Tim came in to fix the water heater while my aunt was in one of the downstairs showers and he said water was pouring into the crawl space. So he eventually had to cut into the wall behind the shower where we discovered a 2 or 3 inch crack in the pipe.
I had no usable kitchen for the first month and a half I lived in my house so I ate only stuff I could microwave or cook in a toaster oven and ate off of paper plates. So fun.
Living in a house during a lot of construction is exhausting and stressful. I hope you get through it soon!
Also, all of my initial major construction was completed one week before Christmas. I was working two jobs at the time, had two huge commission paintings I was working on for someone that needed them for a Christmas gift for his wife, and once construction was done I had to completely unpack from moving because there was so much dust from the construction that I had just kept everything in boxes, decorate my house for Christmas, and then hosted my family's Christmas that year. And somewhere in there I had to bake 4 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange. Because I am insane.
DeleteGood grief, Beverly. All that would just make me cry.
ReplyDeleteJeanie, I'd be crying, too. Beverly, this is too, too much, but thank goodness you have an honest contractor. Do you think the support beam was damaged from all of the bathroom leaks you've had? Thank goodness it was discovered before your house caved in. I love old houses, too, but your money-pit stories would make me think twice about ever buying one.
DeleteI'm exhausted. If I ever need a good contractor I know who to call. I'm so sorry you have had all these problems with your old house. I hope those new gutter guards solve your problem. We are shopping for the same thing, but that's going to have to wait until we get our yard landscaped because we had to have new field drains put in. Our yard gives a whole new meaning to the words red clay. So I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteDammit, my comment disappeared!
ReplyDeleteI was asking about gutter guard and what keeps them from getting clogged. Pine needles stick to everything.
Also, just laid over 100 grass plugs and praying they don't die. I have sucky grass.