Happy Monday, my friends! Did you have a good weekend? I hope it went nice and slow and not the kind you blink and it's 7pm on Sunday and you feel disoriented. We had quite the week last week with the bathroom reno restarting. I will say it takes a lot out of you to have people come in like a wrecking ball on Monday only to finish the day looking exactly the same but now with the smelly addition of toxic adhesive fumes. They ripped out what they did wrong and put the new one back in. Actually no, it didn't look the same. There were a ton of gaps that weren't there before on the top and in the corners. Why? Because they couldn't be trusted to line up the templates as cut by the measurements the project manager took. The solution? Thick ass trim. 3" thick trim because they couldn't do it right otherwise and they had to eat the cost of the reordering the entire system again and that's how much trust they had in their work crew. You know what else worried me? The fact that even WITH this gap in the corner, the outer walls where they lined up before were almost 1" shorter from the drawn line on the wall of where it lined up before. I checked the base and that lined up the same as the new walls and I was perplexed. Did they piece together what they had available?? Why is nothing lining up? What can be done about this? Nothing. If we're getting shorted an inch somehow, we have to just deal with it. I swear it felt smaller just looking at it. At this point, I will be happy to have something even slightly wider than my body given I've been getting mauled by the shower liner with every shower.
Monday was re-installing what they screwed up.
Tuesday was the main dude having an appointment so he didn't arrive until 11am and that day was an inordinately long amount of time cutting trim. I mean they left at 4:15pm, there were two guys, essentially FIVE pieces of trim to cut and that's what was done in a half day when the day before he told us he was going to do that plus install the shower doors so we could have a working shower by Wednesday because it needs 24 hours to cure. So that wasn't going to happen. Looks like
wipe showers and
dry shampoo for us.
Wednesday rolled in and they installed the
new bathroom fan. (At this point, I purposely bought one they would be forced to take the old housing out because it's smaller but the other one was a piece of crap that the company wouldn't stand behind when I showed them direct pics of defects.) That and skim coating took about 4 1/2 hours before a lunch break and getting back to it. Whatever that was because the Mr and I were messaging each other the whole time and it went a little something like this, hit it:
As you can see...underlying stress all day long as we overheard conversation when we would mute the TV if something perked our attention. I mean if we had two of the one dude there, it would've gone faster but it was a lot of telling the other dude how to do his job because he was 'teaching'. How about since this is a job where the last time your 'teacher' told his student "I have no experience with the system" just because trying to force in three different walls multiple times and you had to eat the cost of ordering a whole new system, maybe you could send a fully experienced crew? 13 minutes after that exchange, we hear a sound that sounds like them cracking into the frosted glass door. We look at each other since he's off by now and we know we're going to have to do an even closer inspection than we were going to do anyway. A lot of looking skyward. Then the 'student' comes down to get the plumbing fixtures we had them take out with a gently worded note to be careful when they removed them as they were new. (We never knew who we were getting day to day so sadly we had to leave notes like we were leaving them for 10 year olds because the dude who was forcing in the walls last time? Older than us.)
By 4pm, like every day for them, as if the whistle blew in the sheep field...
they were packing up.
The Mr went up to inspect and I went up as well to change into
shoeing clothes. He pointed out where if you fling the door open, the glass is going to crash into the handle on the left we said we didn't want. (It opens to the toilet so no need for it from the inside.) I called the manufacturer and asked if they had bumpers for the track or anything and he said they didn't. He pulled up my order and said
"oh. These are the guys that had to reinstall because they scratched the cap and base up."
"Yep."
"I remember that."
"Me too"
I also asked about another concerning issue when I was looking at their website about how to avoid any potential damage issues. You're supposed to 'let it breathe' or on white colors, like our walls, there can be yellowing. I asked when our unit shipped and he said the 10th of December. I said "so it's been sitting there covered in plastic for a month, is that bad?" He said "its not great, ideally they should've pulled that off but if there's ANY issue with that, call us, we'll fix it." So I'm praying there IS no future issue awaiting us but yeah. He's sending the new handle out and we should have it this week so we can replace that ourselves. He's like "lets not get them involved with this, I'll send this straight to you." 😂 We went snow shoeing after and it was bitterly cold on the fingertips but on our third lap we got to see deer when it was dark and we were under stars. (Well, I saw their shape but still.) It was a nice reward for hanging in there all day.
Friday was the day the project manager came to inspect what they did and get the final payment. I purposely didn't write the check because I wanted to see if they were going to do the right thing and give us money off for the BS. He looked at it and said because of our job, they now require trim because otherwise it's just too tight. We recalled how Todd forced the panels in multiple times, mentioned about the dings in all the walls, you know, reminding him of the trouble. All of the more harshly worded things we swore we were going to say the previous day went out the window. Then he gave the amount to be paid. Full price. I was stunned for a second and my blood was boiling so bad I messed up the first check as everyone stood in silence. At that point it was just like GTFO of our house.
Luckily, about two hours later, I had therapy. I griped to her about it pretty much the whole time. I told her I was so tired of this crap of getting the shaft from every contractor, 5 star rated with much research by the way, every effing time. She asked why I didn't ask for money off. I said I felt like we dropped enough reminders that he should've offered it. I think I was waiting for the Mr to say something (not in his nature) and he was waiting for me to be the heavy, then neither of us did it. She said it wasn't too late just because we paid and I could contact them. She could tell I was likely not going to do that. She said I continue to allow bad behavior of people not delivering or taking responsibility when they f*ck up and don't have the confidence to hold people accountable because I don't feel worthy. I agreed and she said you can do that without it being personal. The standard now is shit expectations and by not holding people accountable, it allows them to
walk all over you. I told her I would consider it and she said "I can lead you to water Anele..." I said "I know!" When it was over, I talked to the Mr about it and he was hem hawing around and said it was up to me. I asked why he would be against it and he said because then it makes us look poor like we can't afford it. Well, when he told his own co-workers at the beginning of the week when he said the project was starting back up, they were like "at a discount, right??" and he said he didn't know. So even his own co-workers thought we deserved money off after all of the bullshit but he wasn't going to be the one to ask. So you know what? I did. I emailed the owner whom we dealt with on our kitchen project. I told him I understood there was likely cost on their end since they had to reorder the system again but given the inconvenience along with the door repair I was going to have to do upstairs when they scratched our doors which was an added inconvenience and cost we were not prepared for. I said I purposely didn't make out the check to see if the project manager was going to give any money off and when he didn't, it was upsetting and maybe he didn't have that authorization. I was contacting him to give him the opportunity to correct that. I have no idea if I'll hear back from him or not. I've kept a couple of other things that went wrong in my back pocket like ceiling chunks that were just finished 2 years ago as well as their team shortcutting the fan replacement we paid for and throwing away a part of the new fan so we had to incur extra expense for that. We'll likely never see them again anyway. Even if we put another bathroom in the basement, it would be a different type of job they wouldn't do. We'll see how that pans out.
The actual weekend was pinching ourselves their part was actually done and we don't have pending appointments with them anymore. I needed a day to mentally recoup from the previous anxiety of the previous two weeks and prepare but the Mr was jacked to get some forward progress made, which I get, but just made me grumpy. He asked earlier in the week what fun thing I wanted to do this weekend and I didn't know then but later saw an antique store I liked was having a sale so I scheduled a reminder email Friday so we could get to it Saturday. That's where my headspace was. I'm a processer especially after writing an uncharacteristic email asking if you're sure you wanna charge full price after that BS in addition to what needs done, need a day to breathe from a week of gut gnawing stress and he wants to plow forward to get the reminders of them out of here as a way to deal with
his anxiety. Not getting the day I needed started me on a spiral so I guess I have a new topic for therapy tomorrow! We wallpapered the attic hatch drywall piece, he spackled holes they made pretty much everywhere. Of course we didn't have the same ceiling paint so we had to buy a whole new friggin'
gallon just for
touch ups which pissed me off more. I should send them a bill for all of the things we had to buy due to their guys screwing up or not being careful. So he got that delivered and repainted the ceiling spots I worked on some meal prep earlier in the day which you may have read about in a rare
Sunday post. I hate how much food prep takes out of me and to pile that on regular having to cook makes me really pissy. I even pre-formed and seasoned our burgers the night before thinking I was ahead of the game but forgot to make the caramelized onions I had planned and those take for-EV-errrrr. So that first glorious shower in our completed shower that had me so clean? I now smelled like an onion farm for the rest of the day. I got some work done here and there and I know all of the tax crap is looming for me to get together so I was feeling the pressure.
Sunday morning was spent with me bed rotting with my earplugs in as long as possible. Nothing like starting the day with some good old fashioned avoidance. Plus, you know how it is when things ended on a pissy note the night before and the next day you're mentally like "are we still doing this because my frame of mind is only worse because of have to do's after not getting to do my want to do's." I come out and the Mr is painting and gives me a good morning.
Have to do's. Beh.
I guess time to get the
crockpots going and cut veggies for chili since I don't like the way the chili tastes when I use the
food processor. Then I have to cook some more for actual meals that day and I can already feel the mental pressure. Hmm, since he's already on a painting frenzy, I thought I'd see how he felt about priming while I'm food prepping because the thought of doing both makes me not want to do either. He then asked about going to the antique store and I told him that was kind of a yesterday thing because I said I needed a day and he said he wanted to get the other stuff taken care of. I don't think people who don't suffer with the kind of anxiety or whatever I have, where I don't want to be reminded yet/just give me a minute get how stressful that is to watch other people do the stuff you're not mentally ready for yet. Major guilt comes into play and overwhelm which turns to a swirl of other emotions. Between getting home from a road trip, a week of anticipatory anxiety for both of us with the unknown and a week of the known, now my headspace with all of the crap we had ahead of us that is now hanging over me, I had a breakdown and started crying. I asked if he could prime and he seemed okay with it so I told him I'd make brunch first since he woke up with a headache. Time to stop doing the coming week food prep, switch to all of the brunch food prep which is always a fun balancing act hoping everything is still hot when you get it served and it never seems to be. 😕
After that, he got working on the priming and I turned on this
super cute speaker my friend got me for Christmas and put on some boogie tunes to make kitchen time suck less. I went back to veggie cutting, doing the mountain of dishes awaiting me, switched out the trash and cleaned it inside and out, cut up some of the bag of jalapeno peppers I got to encourage me to actually use them instead of letting the rest of the bag rot. Peeled our black garlic for the week and did a quick wipe down. My back was really starting to hurt but I still needed to paint the attic hatch so I sat down and did that then washed the brush so I'd be ready later that night for coat two.
When we finally hit a stopping point, then we made it to the antique store. I spied the books I liked as a kid.
There wasn't anything that caught my fancy but it was nice to get out of the house. We came home and he fixed some ceiling paint issues and I put the second coat on the attic hatch wallpaper. Primer revealed there were some holes to fill and some areas to sand so the Mr took care of that. We had some of the chili I'd been cooking all day then I began parsing out the crockpot chicken. I did two cauliflower rice bowls for us this week...Chinese and Mexican. Then I got the others in dishes to be used another night. I got the chili in the freezer and cleaned up a little and I was a pooped pup.
We watched a little tube and that was about all she wrote for the night. We cozied in with a little hot cocoa before the temps take a nosedive. So that about wraps up our end so far. If you want to see what my plan for the week is health wise, head over to
yesterday's post.
How was your weekend?
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