Contractor Gone Bad
People ask me all the time why my husband and I do all of the work on our house by ourselves. Why not just hire someone they ask. Someone who will get it done in a timely manner, professional quality, and get it over with. They of course are assuming that one can actually find a competent contractor who can fit you in before the second coming.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse, a certain dead contractor perhaps, but this weekend I was reminded once again why my husband and I became DIY fanatics.
But first the back story. Once upon a time we bought this huge old house and hired a contractor to do some work. It took him forever. It went ridiculously over budget. When I questioned him on being over budget he became angry and defensive. Many things we done shoddily. Our brand new screened in porch did not have the proper supports and within 9 months was literally falling off of the house. In the end we had to fix ourselves. The countertop he fabricated for our laundry room was not sized properly so the sink if way off center in the cabinet that contains it. In the end we just decided to live with it.
Other things were smaller, but the perfectionist in me was bothered by them. And still is.
Fast forward back to this weekend. We are hanging our cabinets in our laundry room. They are balanced on a temporary support and I am holding them in place, while my husband drills hole after hole into the wall. Looking for a stud to screw the cabinets into. To discover that there are no 2×4’s in the wall.
It seemed somewhat unbelievable. There has to be some sort of wood back there, right? Right? Nope. We cut a sizable hole into the wall and there was nothing back there remotely resembling a 2×4.
What the sheetrock is screwed into is anyones guess. Since it used to be an exterior wall, we think that he just out some sort of firring strips up an completely random intervals.
One last photo of my husband knocking on the wall, hoping against hope to find something, anything, to screw the cabinets into.
But what is a homeowner to do? We had asked around. The contractor that came the most highly recommended was booked for at least eighteen months. He was also three times as expensive. Had we known then what we know now, we might have just waited and used him anyway.
A new website has been developed to help homeowners find thousands of unbiased reports and reviews about service companies in 124 cities around the country. With over 650,000 members, Angie’s List is a better resource than just asking your neighbor. I can’t wait until they have a chapter in my area.
