Anyone else ready to cry, scream, or give up? Contractor venting here!
zellycat2
7 years ago
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Anglophilia
7 years agomillworkman
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Garden a COMPLETE bust! Ready to dig it up and give up completely
Comments (11)I can hear that you're very frustrated, but I don't understand why you want to take such drastic measures, lol. Though, I have thought about scrapping the whole thing from time to time. I'm a first time gardener. I have to tell you that we had snow on May first, lol, so it sounds like we have similar areas. If your squash are otherwise healthy, you shouldn't get flowers until now anyway. Spray the evil bugs off with your garden hose and then give em a real good spray with soapy water. I was a little freaked out over a few different kinds of good bugs in my garden (ex: pill bugs eat compost). Are your cucumbers small because they've just formed? Or do they need to be pollinated? If they're healthy, they'll just keep producing more cukes until a few get pollinated correctly and one grows to full ripeness. If you planted in mid-May, most tomato varieties won't be ready to produce yet, lol. I have two romas that are two feet tall. Every other plant is four feet tall or taller, but those romas I started a bit later (mid-May, btw) and haven't started their real growth yet. One of them has decided to keep up with the Joneses and is trying to produce, and that has it's own set of issues. Overall, if your leaves are green, you're doing just fine. Toss a bit of compost on those squash and get rid of those bugs. One word of caution is, if those little bugs you found are squash bugs, I understand they'll saw right through your stems, so you should take immediate, decisive action. It doesn't sound like them from your description. IMHO: you're doing just fine, you're entering the home stretch, don't give up just yet. Grace, Carolyn P....See MoreI could scream. Should I give up?
Comments (45)The old adage "if you want something done right, do it yourself" rings very true here. I like the yellow stakes idea. Even if the mow/blow guys can't read, surely they know their colors - do not touch!!! The yard man who does the landscape care where I work clips the formosa azaleas like hedges - even after August when they have set their buds for next spring. I told my boss but he still does it, and there were no flowers this year. Duh! You grow up in Florida and don't know azaleas aren't hedges??? I've had my neighbor's "20-year old handyman/gardener" spray RU in the wind (my whole front yard of roses was downwind) and say "my uncle says it only kills grass". There's no cure for stupid. The builder of our subdivision (34 lots) did not want an HOA but after erecting a nice entrance sign for the subd name was told by the city that doing so required him to have an association (?!?!). So he went the minimally invasive route of a POA - Property Owners Association. In Florida anyway a POA may or may not apply even the few rules they have which are only meant to protect property values NOT dictate house color, yard plantings, etc. Our rules do say we must have grass in the front yard, but the board has not enforced that against me. :)) Invariably, there are errors in communication - especially between men and women (I won't say more, but I don't understand what's so hard about LISTENING). Funny thing - my bosses DH is a very verbal, non-mechanical, lawyer-educated but non practicing man who repeats EVERYTHING he says at least twice. At first I found it kind of aggravating, but then I came to appreciate the second chance to "get" his instructions and now wish everyone would "tell me twice". I'm more and more grateful for the toughness of OGRs. I hope hoovb's HOA Mons Tillier is on its way to recovery, and I hope luxrosa's 12" tall teas survived. I will be hugely impressed if they do. Sherry...See MoreProfessional Tool help? (I give up on the contractors!)
Comments (36)Hi igloo, As a woman who started out not knowing pliers from a wrench, and has since done almost everything in our whole-house remodel, I'll give you my perspective. I think I remember you saying in the past that you're a small person? Even if not, these tools are made for men. They're heavy -- I've given myself wrist/thumb problems from using my drill a lot because of the torque when it stops. So check out any hand held tools for a while to make sure they're very manageable for you. Next, it doesn't seem to me that you need a table saw. That opens a whole can of worms: tools like TSs, jointers, planers, etc, need a very good dust collection system, and that gets complicated and controversial. It's the fine dust, the dust you can't even see, that is harmful to your lungs. You don't actually have to worry as much about the typical sawdust you generate, the stuff you're very aware of, because you kick it out of your lungs when you breathe. The fine stuff lodges in them. Given that, if you start wanting to build cabinets and/or furniture, you will need a TS, and I definitely recommend buying a cabinet saw (as opposed to a contractor's saw) that costs at least $2300 or so. The Sawstop is a very good saw, from what I've read. But you're paying $1000 extra for the stop feature. Losing fingers happens often enough to seasoned woodworkers, but danger from kickback is a lot more common, and it can't stop that. For $1K less you can get others of a similar quality (I have and like the Powermatic 2000.) The cheaper ones (contractor's saws) are inaccurate in any number of ways for cabinetmaking. I bought an $88 wet saw from HD a few years ago. I installed tile on three smallish rooms and it worked like a charm. Much better to buy than rent 'cuz they're not expensive, and you can take your time with them. I'm impressed by what I've seen of Festools, but I've worked with their vacuum and a Fein Turbo III vacuum, and I prefer the latter. (I encouraged my boss to buy the Festool vac and now I wish I hadn't, it's unwieldy.) The Fein, a little more expensive, with a HEPA filter, moves around easily and is less clunky. And its suction (see stats on website) is at least as good as on the Festool. You'd have to check out whether its hose will hook up to Festool tools. If you're doing only trim work, you don't need to worry about most of these things. I'd start with just the tools that are needed. If you find you need more, you can buy as you go. Buying tools never stops. Even tho I've got an 8" jointer, cabinet saw, etc, in my basement, that work very well for my household needs (building cabinets) they look like toys compared to the ones my boss uses. So spend your money selectively and try to resist buying all kinds of things you won't use much! Sombreuil said a very true thing: Great work can be done with a limited number and quality of tools, but it takes longer and requires more experience. Don't expect things like miter saws to work right out-of-the-box. They need to be tweaked and tuned. And for a beginner this will be even more potentially frustrating, but it is a wonderful way to learn. I'm far from a pro but I've found out that it takes a lot of skill to do good work! Crown moldings are among the most frustrating things I've ever done, because no angle in your house is 90 degrees. Best of luck and I hope you enjoy the work!...See MoreHow do you know whether to give up on your contractor
Comments (14)Interesting - I'm already full of self-recrimination about how this job was handled, both on my end and that of others, so it's hard to hear from third parties how I've bungled it. As a newbie it's hard to know how to make it happen. I guess the better approach would have been to let someone else run the job, soup to nuts, and just pay more for their services. I thought I could handle it, and learn quickly, and I was wrong. I'm an attorney (write contracts, so am leery of contracts, I realize how little they are worth and the people behind them are more important), and a lot of people think what I do is hard to understand - well, compared to the contracting business it's easy! When I say I'll be there at 2 - I mean 2 not 4. At least in NYC 2 is just a ballpark time and it really means, whenever I can get there, maybe 2 maybe 2:45. And I've found that most contractors follow that approach here. Most contractor candidates just bid out a door, maybe a type of door, but not a specific product. Not one person said to pick out a door ahead of time, and had they done that I would have had no idea what type of door to pick anyway. I'm relying on professionals for that. This is a temporary kitchen job; I've got appliances either delivered or being delivered. I just have to buy cabinets and countertop and backsplash but that doesn't have to be part of the GC's job and in fact it wasn't part of his bid. My goal has been to get the basics done, so I can get a tenant on our lower floor and apply for a loan so I can finish the job with the proceeds. If we don't get approved for a loan we can still finish, just on a tighter budget. I guess my original question comes back to, what to do when you have lost confidence in your GC, do you try to get it back, do you muddle through, do you fire them. I don't want to fire this guy, he's in the thick of it, I just don't want to use him for anything someone else can do that doesn't require a permit - and he's almost done with the part that required a permit. We'll close out the job (he has to do the floors, install the appliances, and turn a window into a door and he's mostly done; all but the window-door conversion should be done in a week and then we wait for the door to come; he's also putting together a laundry area and that's an add-on and since we really could use a working washer/dryer we're not pulling that from him) I guess the harder part is, once we're done with this guy we're not really done. Then I have to get cabinets and sink ordered and installed, and then get a countertop ordered and backsplash installed. I guess there's an end in sight. But with filthy floors, dust all over, no washer/dryer it's hard to see the end game. So yes I messed up thinking I was up to the challenge of being on the front line with the contractor. Perhaps some contractors, yes, but mine no, so yes he's getting the blame, perhaps unfairly. In the end, perhaps we needed an architect to just run the job, and yes an architect getting paid by the project not the hour. The architect I liked best is hourly, and a number of people have had problems with him for that reason, he ended up overcharging them and they either couldn't finish their job or complained to him about his fees and got them reduced. I took the tack of, using him less and adding stress on myself. Not a good approach....See Morejust_janni
7 years agozellycat2
7 years agoDesign OCD
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agorantontoo
7 years agoAnglophilia
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7 years agopoolroomcomesfirst
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7 years agozellycat2
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7 years agoJoseph Corlett, LLC
7 years agozellycat2
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7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoMittens Cat
4 years ago
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