Disastrous DIY by Cowboy Tradesmen
This is an article written for the #mayinleo series with today being Day 7 ....
What have been your experience? What disaster DIY have you seen?
I just had to write about a cowboy plumber / tradesman and Covid!
We are going back to 2020....
All the pictures I am going to share are real from our bathroom or flat, the story unfortunately is very real.
What a fluffing mess!
It's a disaster right ....
That is the gist for Day 7...
You might be thinking well when you do DIY there is alot of mess...
You are right!
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs and all that...
Let's go back to the beginning....
We rented a flat and I noticed there was damp on the bathroom wall. It was coming from an outside hall wall. These are old buildings around 150 years old, which is quite common for over here but not so in many countries.
The landlady eventually agreed there was a problem and would get someone to fix it....
Problem number 1 ....
That got me worried as she is a cheapskate and does everything halfarsed and on the fly....
This guy she choose took about a week to finally show up. He would arrange a day and time to come and then either not show up or cancel...
I mentioned this to her, but oh no he is a great guy she says....
Well he arrived and kept pulling things off the wall, wallpaper then decides to go down to the lathe and plaster.
He was pulling shit off left right and centre.
Things were piling up and yes you saw what he put in the bath!
Turns out he was Polish, fair enough I have no problems with that.
Turns out he was being paid under the table and wanted money up front for materials...
He got worse ... convinced her to get a new bath and toilet
Yep that is the space where the bath was!
By now we were in lockdown and only essential repairs were allowed etc ....
He was fluffing useless...
At this point said he was in hospital....
... but left our bathroom looking like this ....
We had to move the black bags to even get to use the toilet!
I was regally pissed off now, turns out the landlady didn't know the guy at all. She just went on facebook and picked him.
Yep he was a fluffing cowboy. So we had to use the shower in the landlady's house for a few weeks.
He convinced the landlady to get the whole bathroom replastered ...
and so those plasterboards were delivered .... correction ... a lorry turned up and the cowboy was supposed to be there to unload them ... Where was he? Fluffed I know, I had to unload them!
This guy did a runner, he left his tools with us and would not come back or answer calls.
I did say it was during Covid lockdown ...
You remember those days of empty shelves...
Meanwhile his mate turned up one day and started ....
That was how it stayed for two months.
The landlady was unreal and expected full rent!
Well that was not happening.
Meanwhile the cheapskate landlady was buying knockoff materials and turned up with a bath and sink and toilet...
I was hmmm
Where the fluff are we going to store this?
Was my response when her family turned up with said bathroom fittings...
Going through my photos is depressing ....
20th May 2020 over two months since this started we had progress!
We could have a bath, still no sink or proper floorboards or walls!
Progress on 23rd June 2024 we now had plasterboard behind the shower fixture...
I mean that took four weeks to put that plasterboard up.
Skip to 10th July 2020
It took until August and this time two Scottish tradesmen to finish things. What a fluffing nightmare.
Cowboy professionals are the bloody worst!
Seriously it was ridiculous, I despise people that do a half assed job.
Whether it is renovating a bathroom or building a social platform Interface.
If you are going to do something then do it right or don't bother
Sources and Reference documents
This article is an entry for this month's Inleo writing initiative.
You can find all the details in May Inleo - Monthly Prompts
Todays prompt is How was your experience with InLeo?
All ramblings are from me, the mad Scotsman TengoLoTodo unless otherwise stated, note lead image is generated with AI on pixlr .com from a prompt by me.