Demo begins

You may remember a while ago, shortly after I bought the house, I had it tented for termites.  In order to do it, I had to run to the house after work to cut down a trellis that attached my house to the neighbors fence.  I was able to get it down without too much trouble and the tenting went fine.  In the short time I had to take the trellis down, I didn't have time to remove the shelving unit below it.  It was termite eaten, blocked the path by the house, and was useless to me, so it had to go.

This thing ran the length of the garage, and while the wood was weathered, it was secured with the most giant screws and anchors ever.

There were at least 18 of these holding the thing up.  They were secured so tightly, I wasn't able to use my power screw driver to take most them out, all it did was strip them.  I had to alternate between using a manual flat-head that was slightly to small for the job and the ends of my mini pry-bar, but I was finally able to get everything down and off.

You can see all the long screws.  There were 4 of these panels that had to be taken down!  But victory is truly sweet.

Also, after doing a little clean up on the ground, it turns out there is actually concrete that runs from the house to the fence under all that dirt.  I think that's a pretty big bonus.

While I was taking the shelves down, the dumpster I had rented to get rid of the shelving unit, the trellis I had taken down, and some of the stuff I had found in the back yard arrived.  I was using the screw driver to take apart the trellis so it would fit easily into the dumpster.  I was moving pretty fast, just unscrewing and tossing the screws straight into the dumpster.  I did about six rapid fire, but when I went for number seven, I noticed a problem.

The end of my screw driver no longer had the magnetic Phillips head attachment that allowed it to actually work.  I slowly looked at the dumpster and may have thought profanity, maybe tears, maybe both.  I had accidentally pulled the end off with the screw and tossed it into the half full dumpster.  Here is what I'm talking about:

Anyone thinking needle in a haystack?  I thought about just leaving it in there, but I didn't have any other attachments for the screwdriver, and I still needed it.  I wound up climbing into the dumpster, pulling out some of the contents, and carefully picking through the rest.  It actually only took a few minutes to find the thing.  I feel like I got lucky.  A needle in a haystack my be harder, but a screw driver head in a dumpster could be close.

ATTC, Episode 4: Italian-Israeli take 2

At the end of my meeting with the Italian-Israeli, I agreed to meet with him in two weeks so that he could be "the last person I talked to".  I thought he would be bringing me some sort of budget, some idea of how much it would cost.  When we got in the house, he asked me if I had met other contractors and when I said I had he asked me if I was ready to go.  I looked at him a bit confused and said, "well, I haven't gotten any numbers from you, so no."  I told him that I would not be signing anything without getting some sort of idea of cost and I think he was a little surprised.  He spent five minutes taking a couple measurements and writing a basic list of the projects I had:  kitchen, bath, electrical, etc... and spouted off a number.  It was higher than I was hoping for, and higher than the other guys, but not that far outside of reasonable.
 
After he gave me the number, he asked me what I was thinking about the project.  He said he had been honest with me and that he wanted me to be honest with me.  I decided to go ahead and do that.  At this point, the Pete's were the most impressive, and I had pretty much knocked him out of the running.  I was pretty sure that we would just not work particularly well together.  I felt that our ideas of design and finish would not match and that he would be spending his time working to convince me to spend more money.  I told him that I was leaning in a different direction.  He looked at me confused and asked, "What do you mean?", so I decided to make it more clear.  "As in I'm leaning away from you and toward someone else."  At this point his face got all pinched with what seemed like confusion and possibly hurt.  He asked me if there was anything he could do to change my mind.  He asked me what the other guys had done differently.  He told me he really wanted this job.  He was starting to sound a bit desperate.  I felt like I was breaking up with him.  What I was really looking for was a detailed bid with labor and materials separated.  I had asked him for it before, but he basically avoided answering, trying to tell me how his bid included a budget of, say, $3-5 per square foot for the kitchen tile (never mind that I want hardwood).  When I asked him what he would do if I wanted something that was only $1, he just told me matter of fact that he would give me a credit.  I didn't want to waste the time or energy explaining to him that without a detailed bid with everything separated, I would have no way of knowing if the credit had actually been given, or how much it had been.  Basically, the division of the bid by labor and materials is designed to keep him more honest, and he didn't seem all that interested in that.

He asked for his folder back, which he checked to make sure everything was still there, and I told him goodbye.  As he was leaving, head down, tail between his legs, he continued to ask if there was anything he could do, because he really wanted the job.  I pictured him returning to the office and getting yelled at by his family (he said his company was a family business when we first met) for not getting the job.  I assured him that I had his contact info, and if I thought of anything he could do I would let him know.  I was sure to use my calming, "everything is going to be ok" voice.

As soon as he drove away I sent a text message to my friend and called my mother so I could share the laugh.  What can I say, sometimes I'm just not a good person :) 

ATTC, Episode 3: The Petes

The third contractors I met with were two guys named Peter.  They showed up with their notepads and measuring tape, ready to work.  I walked them around and they took notes and measurements.  They had suggestions for the project and asked me questions about what I was looking for, all the while writing everything down.  So far, these guys were impressing me.  I told them I was looking for a detailed bid, separating materials and labor.  The other contractors I met didn't seem willing to do that, but they said it would not be a problem.  They would give me a bid that was just labor, so I could "compare apples to apples".  Though without materials listed, I would need to do a little more work to figure out the exact budget, I was very excited to be able to get the exact labor cost.

I was very impressed with the guys.  They took measurements of the rooms, even measured the entire back of the house so they could give me a precise estimate of how much it would cost to restucco.  They pointed out aspects of the job that might take a bit more work, like the fact that I would likely have to replace the about a third of the wood floor in my master bedroom before it I refinished it because the boards appeared to have shrunk and were separated from each other.  Although this would mean that the repair cost would go up, I did like that they were actually looking at the job and giving me some realistic expectations about what needed to be done.  I told them that I was not interested in non-permitted work, that anything that required a permit would need one, and they were fine with that too.

They were at the house for about 45 minutes, measuring and discussing the plans with me and each other.  At the end, head Pete (the one I would sign the contract with) asked to set up a time later in the week to bring in his electrician and plumber so that they could have a look and get me a real number for how much those parts of the project would cost.  We set up a time to meet both subs at one time and they headed out.  I knew I would need to get and check references (they agreed to provide them), but I was pretty sure these were my guys.

A Tale of Three Contractors (ATTC), Episode 2: The South African

The next contractor I met was basically the opposite of the Italian-Israeli.  He was an older guy, early 60s maybe, that wanted me to walk him around and show him the projects I had for the house.  He had a few suggestions on my planned projects and he seemed to know what he was talking about.  Through the course of the meeting, though, my opinion of the guy swung wildly.  He listened to me as I explained the projects I wanted done.  Plus!  He only uses sub-contractors because he doesn't want to deal with employees.  He's "been in the business too long and not interested in dealing with all that."  Not in itself a minus, but the matter of fact tone in which it was said rubbed me the wrong way.  Also, in that same tone he told me that he didn't get permits, he had the subs do all that, he "didn't want to deal with all that" either.  Minus.  He has been in the business for over thirty years here and in South Africa and is a member of several professional organizations, including one that is apparently fairly selective as to who it lets in.  Big plus.  He was also willing to let me do whatever aspect of the project I wanted to do, and supply any materials I chose to.  That was a nice change from the Italian-Israeli.

So I went back and forth on this guy up until the end, when the balance shifted.  We had been talking for probably about 25 min, walking through and around the house discussing the projects, and he told me about his process.  He was going to get back to me with a budget, basically a ballpark estimate based on what he had seen that day, and if I agreed that it was in budget, then he would bring in his subs for a more concrete number.  Not necessarily terrible, so long as I could get some real numbers before I sign a contract, but here comes the final rub.  After all this talk and walking around, he gave me his card and asked me to "send me an e-mail with everything we talked about today and I'll get back to you with a budget."  Seriously?!  You want me to write all this stuff down for you?  Isn't that part of your job, to take notes on potential jobs so you can give me a budget?  I guess he didn't want to deal with all that note taking stuff.  There seemed to be a lot of things he wasn't interested in dealing with.  Sort of made me wonder how many other aspects of the projects he wouldn't want to deal with, either.

I did wind up sending him the e-mail, just because I wanted to know how much he thought it would cost, but I had already decided not to use him.  I didn't bother to respond to his e-mail.  You know, I just didn't feel like dealing with it.