Smoothing out the Rough

Despite the photo, yesterday kind of sucked.

Not huge suckage in the grand scheme of life, but the day was needlessly frustrating.

This summer, well... year really, has been all about home improvements. We invested in new furniture, installed a new fence, got a new roof, gutters and downspouts. The cost adds up. When you spend ALL the money you just hope things will go well. You want to trust the people working for you. You hope the project will go smoothly, and when it doesn’t... you want to be working with communicative tradespeople.

At the moment we are mid replacing our back steps.

We had six steps from a patio/landing up to our back door. They were made of wood, and as wood tends to do the steps were rotting. Sadly, the most handy person in my family lives 8,000 miles away. So, I decided the longest term solution with minimal upkeep would be installing concrete steps

Getting a quote proved to be really difficult!

I have no idea how many companies I contacted to do the steps. Most never returned calls or email inquiries. One guy showed up and declared our job to be too small. Another came and just never sent a quote. After weeks, I finally met a fellow (he showed up to give us a bid) who seemed knowledgeable and his company had good reviews. So we signed a contract and submitted a 50% deposit. Hurrah!

Or not hurrah?

I like to be home as much as possible when contractors are doing work. You never know if something weird is going to happen. It is much easier to resolve issues as they happen, than it is to come home to find a job done incorrectly.

Things got weird when I got a call at work from my house late last week. The contractors had shown up to take out the old stairs, but never told us they were coming. It seemed odd. Plus, the call was just to confirm they were at the correct house.

On Wednesday they no showed to build the form. Yesterday they showed up even though I had specifically told them no one would be home to give them access to power. (Luckily I ended up being home.) While here they built the form but left out a step and made them all too tall. Then they left came back and rebuilt the form. They still left out a step and then blocked a window! So I told them that was garbage too. Cement guy showed up in the middle of the second rebuild. My company hadn’t ordered a line so the cement couldn’t get to where the steps were being built unless they shoveled it. However, to shovel it the cement would need to be wetter. The cement delivery guy said the cement would be too wet and the bottom steps would need more time to set before the upper steps could be poured. After over an hour the cement guy left. In the meantime I am texting my main contact at the company expressing my strongly worded dismay at the whole day. He eventually shows up. Promises they will rebuild the form to the exact dimensions of the old steps (you can still see their outline against the house). He says they will take care of that last night.