Laura's Renovation Adventure

It's been a whirlwind. Liv and I spent a lot of time last week just prepping paint. The carpenters, on the other hand, took out a closet and built a door from the living room to the master bedroom. The door will be wide enough for a wheel chair to go through if needed. Because Mom was confined to a wheel chair in the six weeks of her life, we want to make sure that the house is handicap accessible. When mobility goes, it can go really quickly, as we learned. I just made sense to dad and me to make sure the house was accessible before he moved in.

 

The rest of us worked on prepping the house for flooring. The carpet has to be out of the rooms where we are having the flooring replaced. Also, anything we intend to do to the walls has to be done. Dad painted his office a beautiful butter yellow. Saturday, we had a painting party. 

We have some family friends who have had rental property, so they have done a lot of construction. Liv and I were there and my brother and a cousin. We all worked pretty much all day. The carpet is out of the bedroom and the hallway. They door is cut from the living room into the master bedroom. The wall paper is out of the living room. Liv and I painted the entry hall, kitchen, breakfast nook.

We finally hired someone to help us work on one of our projects. He was an acquaintance of ours, as he used to be our neighbor and his wife works where I work, but in another department. They seemed like nice people and he had been in business a long time, so we hired him to do some drywall work for us and help us round up other trades people to do a bit of wiring and plumbing.

The trades people were fine. We were able to move our washer and dryer out to what was before an unusable sun room. We removed all but three windows, and replaced those. We also put in a new door that actually seals.

Our first indication of a problem was when we came home one day and realized that he had drywalled over a board that had a rotted place in it.

Then, another day, we smelled cigarette smoke in the house, and none of us smoke.

He wanted paid in advance for the work, and, stupidly, I did. There was no final walk through, so that we could complain about the lousy job he did on the drywall. There is tape pulling up. He made joints by the windows. The corners have odd patchy bits. In short, it looks like I did it myself. Actually, my drywall is better than that, and I do not consider myself competent to do drywall.

We've spent most of the month of September cleaning up his mess and trying to patch up the work to make it look right. I am not happy.

People have asked us time and again why we've done all our renovation work ourselves, with the help of my dad and kids. With the exception of skilled trades, every time we've hired someone to do carpentry work, we have been disappointed to the point of feeling cheated.