Not a fan

I'm going to go on a mini tirade here.  Yesterday, you might've seen the pic with the hole in the ceiling in our bathroom?  If you don't remember, here it is:

In seeing the rat's nest of wires just kind of hanging out up in the attic and the new fan saying the electrical was on the other side, the Mr knew it wouldn't reach.  We made an appointment with these electricians that we used before and had a great experience so why not use them again.  They knew they would be installing a bathroom fan and running a junction box in the attic.  They had two guys that were here last time, both had no problems shimmying up into the attic so there was no reason to be concerned...until I opened the door.

First off, the guy was 30 minutes late which put me in a grumpy mood to start.  Then when I opened the door, there before me stood an older dude, 5'6", easily in the upper 200's to low 300's with baby T-Rex arms that were NOT going to be able to stretch like the Mr's did.  I thought "oh well, don't judge a book by it's cover, maybe he's still got it going on and won't have a problem."  But I'll admit, I was concerned.  If the Mr couldn't hoist himself into the attic (there's a plywood "chute" all the way around the opening in the attic) then I had no clue how this guy was going to do it unless he had an ejector seat to rocket himself up there.  I go up and show him the fan, tell him to get to it and we go our separate ways.  He's up there fartin' around for an hour before coming down telling me there's a problem.  He said "I can't get up in the attic and that needs to be installed up in the attic."  I said "I know, that's what's on the work order."  He said he'd have to call two other guys to come out and install it because the ductwork was rigid and would need to be cut and re-routed and...well, and then his voice morphed into Charlie Brown adults "wah wah wah wah wah wahhhhhh" until I heard $300-500 and "we'll be here 4-5 hours."  I laughed in his face.  I said "that's not happening."  He said he'd go to Home Depot to get a standard fan for us.  I laughed again and said no because we know what they have in stock and this was our 2nd fan.  I called the Mr at work and had him talk to him.  He told him to install the junction box and he would see if the friend of ours (who installed the one before it) would take a look at it.  He installed the electrical and left.

Thankfully our friend was able to install the box and NO the ductwork did NOT need cut, re-routed, etc and he was done in an hour.  THAT is what ticked us off is that this guy basically lied.  Our friend took one look at it and said we didn't need all of the ductwork and stuff we bought and he hooked it right up.  The guy we paid to be here basically didn't want to do the job or was incapable of doing the job and gave me that ridiculous estimate to scare me away from wanting to okay the job.  I knew the length of time he was saying was a load of crap anyway.  Then the Mr finished the job installing the fan/light.  Poor nugget.  He came straight home from work and into that and was working on it until 8:30pm.  We also felt horrible asking our friend to do that when he was coming straight from work too.  We tried to pay him and he refused and said that's what friends are for.  He's such a keeper!  Not many people like that anymore.

I'll be honest, I'm not crazy about the thing.  It looks like a portal to another dimension.

But I'm proud of the Mr for his part in installing it, grateful for our friend to be able to help us out and even I screwed it to the ceiling so for all of that, I'll live with it.  It's either that or builder grade ugly plastic-y crap and I'm not down with that.  But the Mr has showered and said the mirror barely fogged and there wasn't water all over the walls so that's already reason enough to keep it.

Have you ever had a bad contractor experience?

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