Home improvement projects – managing disappointment and other things

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We are renovating our bathroom. A new home improvement brings excitement. Beautiful stuff to select and choices to make but it also comes with big bags of unmet expectations. Managing my emotions is a full-time job.

They don’t do what they say or beware of workers who come with their kayak – Today is day 11 of tiling a (standard size) shower that was estimated to take a week. No one was here yesterday. (Our tiler calls off on Wednesdays. It must be a new kind of religion.) This makes 11 days that someone was working here over a three-week period. I knew when the tiler showed up in a pickup truck without a toolbox but with a kayak in the back that we were in trouble. Deep trouble.

On a positive note, the vanity is installed. It’s covered with cardboard to protect it from the tiler but it’s in. The countertop gets installed tomorrow (even though the tiler will not be done).

I want to do wallpaper on the vanity wall so I’m knee-deep in wallpaper samples. I miss the stores that had the books. Locally we have one paint store that stocks about 50 books. It’s either that or on-line. From the samples I ordered, on-line is not a great way to choose.

We had a visitor during this process but that’s Gracie’s story to tell tomorrow.

44 thoughts on “Home improvement projects – managing disappointment and other things”

  1. Oh no! Why can’t these guys be reliable and do what they say they are going to do! Hopefully it will be an awesome result at the end of all of it though. Can’t wait to see pictures!

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  2. I can remember many an hour studying the wallpaper books. At the time, I remember going to Painter’s Supply, a small paint and wallpaper store in our City and they were closed on Sundays, so they allowed us to take them home and take them back Monday morning. I got to haul all their wallpaper books home on Saturday after they closed to match wall-to-wall carpeting.

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    • The neighbor two doors up was complaining about his bathroom (we have the exact same layout). I saw it and it was lovely. Someone had already upgraded the shower, vanity and flooring. His complaint was that there was no seat in the shower. I told him to buy a shower bench and take a vacation with the money he saved. About 14 or 15 years ago, the owners did an “upgrade” but they cut corners. The wrong corners. Our shower had mold that we couldn’t get rid of and the storage was awful. If I had my neighbor’s bathroom, I wouldn’t have touched it (except maybe to buy a shower seat!). You are lucky!

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  6. I think all construction tradespeople are required to take the same course, Frustrating Your Client 101, before getting their license. I sure miss the days when you could go to a home decorating store and actually touch the product before purchasing. Fabric and wallpaper need to be seen in real life… not on a screen.

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    • Fabric is the other thing that is difficult to find. Our local Hobby Lobby (they and Joanne’s are the only local game in town) recently cut their inventory in half. It’s pretty blah now. Joanne’s caters to quilters rather than home decorator fabrics. I have gone to designer stores but they “hover” with you rather than let you browse by yourself. They recommend stuff I don’t like.

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  10. Yikes…….maybe I better rethink our possible shower reno next year – at least it’s only the shower we want done…..nothing else…..The company we’re thinking of asking to do it is a home reno company and they did a bang-up job of giving us a new deck last year so – well – we still will think hard about it. We could live with the tiled wall shower BUT would rather not! A canoe and/or flip flops are signs of trouble. LOL

    Hugs, Pam

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  12. Beware of workers that come with a kayak is good advice. 🙂 The whole situation sounds very frustrating. Good luck.

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  13. I cannot think of anything that could be good for an employer when a contractor shows up with a kayak and no tools. Unless it’s a two-seater and you’ve had it with the Beloved Husband–nah, that’s still bad.

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    • Since the kayak sticks out the back, it’s not something I would want to carry with me all the time. I’ve wondered if he stops at a pond-river-stream before going home. It is discerning though.

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  15. Our tiler for the shower at the condo—before we bought our house—was sensitive, he was an artist, did an accurate and beautiful job, had a great sense of funny, lived in a bubble and took almost two weeks to do a very small shower. He worked maybe 6 days. He got to work around 9:30 every morning and he stopped at noon for a pour over made by Jerry every day he was there and we also fed him. He was very likeable and all Jerry wanted to do was keep him there tiling. I stayed in the office and fumed silently. We found out 7 months later that his wife divorced him. We could tell there was trouble at home but we didn’t get into that. I would have definitely picked up on the kayak and expected a rocky road/float to the finish line.
    Kate, all I can say is I feel your pain. I am blown away how the same thing happens to almost everybody we talk to that has done kitchen and bath renovations.

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    • So far aside from him, things have been going smoothly but something was bound to happen. This guy is a free spirit from the 60s. He’s doing tile work wearing flip flops. I shudder to think of the liability to his boss if he drops a tile.

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  16. Must be a mouse!
    Years ago, I had my kitchen and bathroom done at the same time by the same firm. It was not good. The kitchen crew left the kitchen gutted with just a free standing tap so I could not cook for the family or wash up. The bathroom guys were OK, though fitting the mirrored tiles seemed to be beyond them and they broke three (I’d already bought them). We got round it by a vanity shelf over the newly installed radiator……… which didn’t work as the central heating system was not compatible with their plumbing. Luckily I knew a man who knew a man and he fixed it all while we were on holiday and you would never have known he was there. The kitchen however was a complaint and a new crew……….. of ONE! He was brilliant though and did a good job, even artexing the walls above the tiling as I hadn’t thought about it and he had some left over from another job.

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    • You never know what is going to happen when you go into these things. So far, this subcontractor is the only one we’ve had issues with. We have talked extensively to the general contractor so I don’t know if they will continue to use him. He does accurate work but he would be a better fit in a commercial application where people aren’t displaced (and cranky).

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  17. tilers are artists and very sensitive… the tiler of my mom , disappeared and we found out, he was arrested, so the tiler became a jailer… but he immediately did the bathroom and the entrance of my mom as he came free, so we give him an a+ for his work anyway…

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