Our contractor was here all day yesterday, so I should be happy that we finally have our bathroom done, right? Wrong.
Sure, he was here all day, but there was apparently another problem with the new alcove he brought up (and apparently did not check… again) so we are in the same boat as before – except the walls haven’t been covered with plastic and waterproofing, the hardware hasn’t been reinstalled, and we can’t bathe at all right now. He is supposedly returning today to get it to the point where we can bathe, and informed us that the replacement alcove will be available on the 11th. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll have our bathroom finished by the end of next week.
Why don’t we just use our other bathroom to bathe? Because the shower in it was not finished when we purchased this property, and was to be the next project with this contractor. I thought that a two-day project to replace the tub and alcove in our main bathroom so my wife could have her bubble baths back was a higher priority, and that it indeed would have been just a two-day project. But things happen when the professional you hired doesn’t inspect the products purchased.
Is this standard practice? At the last property I owned, there weren’t any major projects that needed to be done and all the minor ones I was able to do myself (I was still healthy and not physically impaired then), so I don’t have much experience dealing with contractors. We had expected to be able to just pick out the tub/alcove set we wanted, give the guy money, stay out of his way a couple days, and *boom* we’d have our bathroom. Then we’d move on to other projects we want finished around here.
This experience has been nothing like that. We’ve had to be home to sign for deliveries of things, not knowing exactly what the items were. Hell, the first go at it, he went to Lowe’s instead of Home Depot to get the items and picked up the wrong things – same brand, different set. It wasn’t until he ripped our existing tub out that it was realized that it was the wrong set, and if noticed ahead of time, we would have avoided having our bathroom in shambles for over a year.
I do understand that dealing with the big box retailers can be a pain in the ass. I get that their policies and lack of quality control (and shipping the wrong items or losing the right ones in transit) can cause unexpected issues and delays – but my issue with this whole situation is that this guy really seems to have trouble taking responsibility for his own mistakes.
If he had checked the items against the contract, he might have realized that what we had selected was exclusive to Home Depot and not available at Lowe’s. We’d still have our old tub (because of the issues of getting the proper items) but our bathroom wouldn’t have been wrecked. If he had picked up the items himself or been present for delivery, he could have checked the pieces and refused to accept them when he realized they were not what was ordered – instead it was my fault for not knowing the part numbers and signing for the wrong items (though I did note on the delivery slip that I was signing to acknowledge that a delivery took place and specified that I couldn’t verify they were correct – I believe that may have been the thing that secured the refund). If he had been present for he second delivery, he could have seen that they were damaged and we wouldn’t have had to spend a year with a broken tub/alcove set taking up the space on the cement slab that we’d park on. Even just yesterday, if he had checked the pieces before restarting the project, he could have seen the damage then, and saved us the headache of having them in our house all day, just to have to come back and redo everything to get us back to where we had been for a year.
But the worst of it all is listening to all of his excuses. Yes, Home Depot sucks and their corporate structure is not conducive to good customer service. Yes, Lowe’s sucks and doesn’t QC their merch. Yes, it sucks to be in an accident and be hospitalized, but don’t say you’ll be hospitalized for a week then drive up our private road to another client two hours later.
I get it – there have been may issues with this project that were completely out of his control, but all the issues could have been avoided if he had just done his job properly from the start and gotten the set we selected.
Interesting Tidbits
Song of the day: You Lied by TOOL
An unknown bacteria on Earth has developed in the Chinese space station – “A startling space microbe forces new protocols, reshaping mission priorities while equipment and health stay intertwined”
How the “Queen of Canada” and Conspiracy Theorists Splintered a Small Town – “Romana Didulo believes she has communed with aliens and been recognized by Donald Trump. When she and her inner circle moved to Richmound, Saskatchewan, some residents protested to kick her out. Others saw an opportunity”
The Proposed Ban on Gun Possession by Transgender People Would Be Neither Legal Nor Constitutional – “The Justice Department reportedly is considering a regulation aimed at disarming ‘mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria.'”
DOJ Posts Embarrassing Apology Over Official Caught in Honeypot Trap – “Attorney General Pam Bondi’s department was forced into damage control after a top justice official was secretly recorded telling a date that the Epstein files would be manipulated to protect Republicans.”