HELLO

"Just take the surface boards down ma'am, we will get there and finish the rest and not bill you for the demolition portion of the kitchen reface." That was the last time the contractor said anything. We try and do the right thing but seem to reap only the push me back resolve for our efforts. The "ANGIES LIST" had referred to three of the better selections for kitchen rehab after breaking down from running into office after office of local home repair persons. My wallet was as full of dollars as my mind was filled with hopes for the outcome and possibilities from any one of the three "magicians" laid at my feet. This was a 1911 Jacobean original and I was striving to make it "beautiful." Beautiful or at least doable. the dining room had been repaired for the hole in the ceiling where an inspector had fallen thru the weak boards in the second-floor bathroom. The boards had been made weak by constant toilet flooding and overly worn flooring around the commode. That rot removed and repaired brought attention to refinishing the room beneath it. The floors had already been stripped of three layers of old carpet, the window air conditioning unit removed and the gaping hole it left in the dining room replaced with a large new picture window. I had eagerly stripped the plaster and lathe wall down in the kitchen on the opposite wall from the dining room just because the contractor... best in town, was "coming on Monday." When I called to remind the office secretary and confirm that I actually had the dates right, I was told they were gone out of town to New Orleans and Texas. The Hurricane Lee effects and call to volunteer had every contractor from carpentry to plumbing and electrical out on a special mission of putting the damage back into liveable conditions. My wall was good testimony that the devastation that could tear out bricks and mortar... plaster and stick walls was and could have far reaches... further than the assessment team would ever know. Our family reunion was slated to occur, at my house, within months. I was a realtor, not a carpenter or... WHAT ELSE COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN?! I consoled myself by knowing that most of an excess of one hundred people would not and could not stand to be late leaving for home from the reunion. None would show up that did not get an invitation. The kitchen wall was gutted, and past all formal greetings the secretary's "hello" was the last thing on my mind. I hang up the phone thinking, "How could my day get any worse." I dialed the Lumber Liquidator's office line to ask the floor resurfacer what day he was to install new floorboards. The men in that office were bumbling as well. Barely past the first "hello" the respondent laid the phone aside to search the store. They could not locate the man hired by their store to do installations. The parquet floors he was to replace in the den were taken up by us as agreed, but he would not be coming out to start the job. He'd left his carpet hammer laying in the middle of the floor, gone out to get a measuring tape and not come back in. His truck left our front drive and that was the last heard of him. To make matters that much more alarming, the painting contractor that I'd nabbed on a Sunday outing to get ice cream for mom and the guys, could not finish his estimate during the tabletop meeting held in my back yard later that day. I was intent upon getting as much work done... as most people do... it was the hired help that the question had to be asserted to; WHAT WERE THEY DOING to make my or anyone's day work?

The reunion was slated scheduled, paid for and hotel funds paid forth and could not be put off. I got the work accomplished by jumping in feet first. I did it myself.