Sunday Morning Blog

July 26, 2005

Home Improvement Contractor Woes Continue

[mood | unsure]

Looking back on this whole process of inspecting, purchasing and renovating our new home, it is easy to see why we just want it to end. Very little, if any of it, has gone smoothly. Yesterday, we added another to our list of let downs.

Bathfitter, who did a fabulous job on our upstairs bath, was here to do our downstairs shower (same company, different installer). The story goes completely down hill from here. The post-installation problems began with the contractor leaving all kinds of mess (demolition, cardboard, dirt, dust, etc.) strewn all over our BRAND NEW carpet. Why he covered our hardwood floors upstairs leading to our stairs from the front door, but made no effort to cover the new carpet is beyond me. The install did not go as written up and ordered - he had trouble putting the shower in, and had to cut it into separate pieces to get it in. This was only the beginning of the problems. When leaving, he recommended not vacuuming right away, as the dust kicked up would get into the fresh caulking. It looked like he had plenty of dust flying prior, as much of the shower was covered with it. With the bathroom door closed, Jesse was able to vacuum the downstairs landing, outside the bathroom. Underneath the layer of crud, she discovered discolorations and white caulking in our new ($2200.00 new) carpet. Upon further inspection of the shower itself, the trim work and seam sealing was really hacked. I got on the phone to them right away, and after being hung up on three times (by their phone system?) I was able to speak with a representative and report the issues.

To be honest, we have hired people to do much of the work here because we didn't want it to look like I did it. Mr. Home-Improvement-Specialist, I am not. The trim work around the downstairs shower looks like I did it - that was not the look we were going for. A manager will be calling us early this morning. We shall see what the end result is. Resolve didn't fix the carpet... we tried that before even thinking about picking up the phone to complain. It appears we will have to wait another month for new carpet to be special ordered (again). Ahh, the trials and tribulations of home ownership. We are still comfortable and happy here... just wishing everything could go smoothly for once.

Oh, and have you ever seen a person with a perfect impression of a bungee cord on their chest? We will have to take photos before they fade. We were picking up the guest room bed last night and I had a little bungee cord mishap... must be the waning full moon!

Posted by capecodcyclist at July 26, 2005 06:21 AM