I pit the short bus passengers who previously owned my house

The BBQ Pit
81

Thanks, the whole house was like this room - a beauty obscured by shoddy additions. Slowly we are trying to get rid of the shoddy and bring out the beauty.

We put in quarter-rounds to cover the gap - and therby hangs another long and sad tale of woe, though with the contractor we got to refinish the floors, not with our previous owner.

Throughout the house, we got rid of the carpets to expose the original floor. We wanted badly to refinish the floor (which was damaged in some places) before we had to move our stuff in. Sadly, this meant we were in a hurry and thus did not have time to vet the contractors as well as we should have.

We asked the opinions of three firms. All gave us much the same quote. However, we had an additional job we needed doing - to replace the original quarter rounds, now all gone, once the flooring was done, to cover the gap. One of the three firms offered to do this job as well for no additional fee as a sweetener; the other two said they didn’t do this sort of work. So we went with that firm. The guy said that he could get started the next day (!) and that he would bring a contract at that time. We said okay, being as I said in a hurry.

The crew came next day, but the head guy wasn’t with them - and no contract. There was some sort of mix-up at the office, he’d be there the next day.

Well they came and re-finished the floors all right over the next couple of days and as far as I know did a good job … but no quarter rounds, and still no contract. The head guy shows up, and wants paying. I ask about the quarter-rounds. He looks blank. “What quarter rounds”?

Guy swears up and down that he had never agreed to install quarter rounds. Indeed, he says, they don’t do that work at all. The flooring was done, please pay, says he.

Well, I can’t point to a contract, because the guy has cleverly never given me one. But I sure as hell hate being lied to my face - the whole reason we chose this firm was that they said they would do that extra job. So I say I won’t pay him, as the job is not finished. He gets angry and menacing. I hold firm and invite him to sue. It gets ugly.

Finally we work out a compromise - I will pay in cash, with a $500 holdback until the quarter rounds are installed. I get the cash and hand it to him, standing outside the door. He takes it, counts it - and then runs off to his car without a word (or a recept).

Next, I get a letter - demanding the whole amount … i.e., claiming I’d never paid him. At this I’d had enough and got my friend who works in this area to fire off a rather nasty lawyer’s letter. My friend finds out that although this firm claims to be a member of various trade associations, it is not. That goes in the letter, along with other sundry legal menaces.

Later I get a letter from a collection agency. My friend writes to them, including the original correspondence, pointing out that these guys are fraud artists.

We never hear from either again. My father in law and I install the quarter rounds.

So the upshot is that it could have been worse, but it caused me such anxiety and trouble I would almost rather have let him cheat me - for weeks I worried that he would heave a brick through my front window. I tell this sad tale to warn others not to repeat my mistakes, all of which came as a result of being in a big hurry because of the move … they are in order:

  1. Always be suspicious when one firm offers a substantially better deal than the others;

  2. Thorougly research your firm, making sure they are actually members in good standing of trade associations, and check references;

  3. Get contract in writing in advance, accept no excuses. Never let the guys start work without a written contract;

  4. Never agree to pay in cash.

82

Ouch. Whats interesting is that depending on the size of the job, contractors around here are required to have a contract. They are also required to be licensed by the state and if they aren’t can get in a good amount of bother as well as being unable to collect on a job.

I’ve had good fortune with the guys I dealt with, even the small guys who wanted cash, but I only paid for work as it was completed.

83

Hit submit too soon and got timed out of the edit window.

I’ve had weird experience pricing jobs out. I’m looking to have my parking spot in the back fixed and I have gotten wildly variable quotes. I had the same experience when I wanted to get rid of the useless front porch.

I had a rotting front porch removed from my house. It never should have been put up in the first place since it didn’t fit the style of the house and was too small to put a chair in and actually use. I got quotes from three guys to remove it. The first guy wanted $3,500.00 for it. The second guy wanted $900.00 to do the job. The third guy wanted $400.00. I went with the guy who wanted $400.00 for it.

I’ve had good fortune with the guys I dealt with, even the small guys who wanted cash, but I only paid for work as it was completed.

84

I currently own two houses (desperately trying to sell one, living in the other). In sell house, the ownder did everything as cheaply as possible . . . we’re talking DIRT cheap. The bathroom sinks were held up with rebar, the entire house was panelled in the crappiest fake wood panelling imaginable, there was no spigot outside of the house (for a hose) . . . basically, nothing had been remodeled since 1962.

In the living house, the owners cut a 19th century glass-fronted cabinet in half and “shingled” over the remaining piece with wood-shake shingles and plywood. Inexplicable: it was like having a piece of a 1920s dentist office roof in the kitchen. The owner fucked us on a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be done (including a bathroom that didn’t get installed) and the icing on the cake was when we found that the fence she had built per the sale agreement HAS NOT BEEN CEMENTED IN! My 6’ stockade fence is now leaning at a 30-degree angle from winter weather. Grrrrrrrrrr. Gotta stop, cuz I’m getting really angry again.

85

This is such a good thread, I can’t let it die!

I can only blame my Dad since he built the family house I am now living in.

As I reconstruct my way through the house, upgrading and rebuilding and leaving a few Muldoons for the next owners if I should ever sell, mostly it is very well done except:

One floor joist in the middle of the kitchen was warped and sticking up fully 2 inches higher than the beams on either side of it. the underlayment was cracked and had the tar nailed out of it where he tried to get it to sit flat over a 2" speed bump.
After much firing and shaving to get the floor and ceiling flat, I found the whole floor had nice 1/8" per foot slope to a random spot sort of in the middle. Making lemonade, I put a floor drain in the ceramic tile floor there.

I know it was standard practice back in the fifties, but Why Oh Why did he make a 7’ ceiling height downstairs. He actually had to cut off most of the lumber and plasterboard to make it short enough. I curse it on nearly a daily basis. My wife and kids always joke about ceiling height.

Now for the biggie. When the house was designed, the fireplace was on the outside east wall. In a shortbus moment he decided to put it in the center of the house. We lost almost 200 sqft of floor space on an already small house, none of the structure was built for it, and there were no windows on the east wall (because there was supposed to be a fireplace there). The roof always leaked around it, and so on. I finally took it out about 10 years ago, unwinding it brick by brick, I have photos of myself and kids looking like ninjas, soot black from head to foot.

Every window in the house was salvaged and different than all the others, I had to remake all the headers and openings to get standard sized windows to fit.

Some of my Muldoons that I leave as a legacy.

When I ordered the windows and sliding glass doors, one south facing sliding door was left hand and had to be special ordered, I miss ordered and didn’t get LowE on that one door, everything fades in the sun that we put there, even the oak floor is bleached.

When rewiring I converted every light circuit to low voltage relay control. All the LV wires and switches go to a central punch down block in the attic, anyone trying to fix or modify this system will have to have an electrical degree to figure it out, I documented and labeled it, but it is not simple and will likely cause some consternation.

I did pull a “friends of Fuffle” and get a white dishwasher then later a stainless/black stove and fridge, unfortunately it is a high end dishwasher and will last quite a while yet. Looked into getting different trim panels but they are close to the price of a new one as I have to change the door and tub.

Mac.

86

Forgive me for asking, but what is the point of installing shutters on the INSIDE of your windows? Aren’t they there to protect your windows from a storm?

We’ve just moved into a new (old) house from the 1880’s. Some of it is fantastic - original flooring, deep-set windows, two staircases. On the other hand, there’s the new chair rail that was clearly made out of plywood, and all of the trim has been heavily painted over. It’s a rental, so we can’t change anything permenant. However, we have been slowly painting over the peach-and-wasabi-green color scheme.

We specifically told the rental agent that we’d be painting. We reinterated this many times, and had the right to paint specifically written into the lease. We took occupancy three weeks early (and paid for it, too) so that we could get the painting started before we moved all of our furniture down. Of course, when the rental agent came by for something else, he threw a huge fit because he “didn’t know we were going to start right away” and he thought the colors we picked were sort of “different”. You thought we were going to repaint with the same colors?

87

Heh, I guess technically they are wooden “blinds” since they are on the inside. Nevertheless, I’ve never seen anything quite like 'em before; I suppose the previous owners thought they went well with the woven grass wallpaper. :confused: :smack:

Anyway, it took us entirely too long to get rid of 'em, there was just so much to do.

More home reno pics:

The '70s basement, in all its glory:

The office, with hideous wallpaper and carpet:

However, they did leave the woodwork untouched:

And the house has lots of nice features, like the art deco doors:

Removing the carpet and refinishing the wooden stairs:

Oh, and I found a “before” shot, with carpet, blinds and wallpaper intact:

I’ll have to take some “after” shots. :wink:

88

Edit: I forgot a couple of muldoons - the desks that they left because they built 'em by hand inside the rooms and they were too big to remove.

89

Around the kitchen was some 3 foot high cheap-ass white-painted molding in the kitchen. Two complete strippings later to take off 12 layers of paint we found beautiful 1930’s hardwood.

90

[QUOTE=Malthus
And the house has lots of nice features, like the art deco doors:

[/QUOTE]

If your doorknobs wind up missing some day, you might as well send the police directly to my house. Those are great! :slight_smile:

91

Thanks! I think they are rather nice, and also importantly, none are missing.

They are not however in the best of shape. Some have been painted over wholly or partially (another muldoon: failure to remove doorknobs etc. when painting; failure to lay doors flat for painting - ugggh.) They are covered with an ugly corrosion.

I have refurbished most on the upper floor, but it is incredibly labour intensive - in essence, polishing each one with a wire brush to take of paint and corrosion. The results are quite nice though. Later, I’ll post an “after” shot.

92

They perform the same function as curtains or blinds. I think they were popular in the 80s.

From this picture, I thought you had bought one of the houses we looked at here in Pittsburgh when we were house-hunting.

93

There must have been a fashion some time in the late '70s orc early '80s for having sections of wallpaper in the middle panel of doors, and having wallpaper on only some walls.

When we were house-hunting, we saw several from this era where this was done - too many for it to simply have been this particular owner’s eccentricity.

94

When we moved to our new house in 1987, I had wallpaper on one wall of my bedroom and the other two walls painted (with one wall painted a different color than the other two), with a wallpaper border to tie the whole thing together. To use a slightly anachronistic expression, I thought it was the bomb.

And don’t forget the different wallpaper patterns above and below chair rails, or wallpaper below the chair rail and painted walls above. We saw that when we were house hunting, and it was a blast from the past.

One house we looked at had foil wallpaper on the stairs. Who ever thought that was anything but hideous? (though I’m sure somebody, at some time, thought that was the bomb, too) And then there was the one where the master bedroom had the walls painted, I kid you not, silver.

I’d take that 70s light fixture. I like it.

When we move out of our house, probably many years from now (moving, packrats, and old houses are not a fun combination, plus we like our house), we will leave a double bed in the bedroom in our attic. My dad literally had to cut the corner off the box spring to get it up the stairs, then repair it once it was up there. I’m sure whoever buys our house will wonder how in the world we got it up there. They will probably post on whatever equivalent to the Dope is around then about the weird former owners of their home who cut up a box spring to get a double bed up there.

I had to call in the garage door repair people recently, when our garage door wouldn’t go up more than a few inches and my car was stuck inside. The garage door guy told me, only half-jokingly, that our garage doors were probably installed by vandals who snuck in in the night 20 years ago.

I’d also like to get my hands on whoever blocked up the regular door into the garage. If they hadn’t performed that bit of asshattery, I could leave my garage door opener in my car, which is where God clearly intended garage door openers to be. More importantly, it would mean I would never forget to bring it with me when I go out to the car. I feel stupid when I do that. Someday we will unblock that door, but there are some other projects that will probably happen first.

95

Heh, I’ll take silver paint over the woven grass wallpaper any day. :smiley:

They left a matching floor lamp, too. You may have that as well. :slight_smile:

You are not alone. In order to get our queen sized box spring up these stairs:

We had to essentially cut it in half.

We also had to send back our first choice of bedroom furniture to the shop, because by my inexpert eye it could fit up the stairs … but in reality, not. I felt bad about that one and so bought even more (but smaller) stuff.

Oh, the projects that will get done … some day. I know them well. :smiley:

To be fair, we are slowly chipping away at the mountain than needs doing here. Latest chip: we repaired the leaded glass windows and made 'em into triple-pained. Solved the “ice forming inside the house” problem.

96

I guess it is easier to deal with. The silver paint made the bedroom seem a bit Hefnerish, though, and made us wonder what sort of people had lived there. When we looked at the house, it was being rented out as student housing- we doubt the college students painted the bedroom.

We had to leave our queen box spring behind in California, and buy a new “split queen” box spring, which is just a queen box spring that comes in two pieces. I had never heard of such a thing before we moved here. We kind of wanted to leave the old box spring anyway, though, since the cats had managed to make a hole in the cloth on the bottom of it so they could hide in it. So far, they haven’t done that to our new split queen box spring… (knock wood)

Return policy if it doesn’t fit up the stairs will be a major, major factor in where we buy any more furniture that we buy for the upstairs or the finished attic in our house. We don’t plan to buy much more furniture, except for a king bed (well, two twin beds, which we will connect together). Someday.

97

Count myself and the wife as another couple that have had to cut down sheets of drywall to get them up the stairs. Stupid low ceiling.

And, as others have intimated, you have no idea how weird it is to be standing in your living room, sawing your box-spring in half to get it up the stairs.

98

I’m jealous. That’s going to be a bad ass house when you are done remodeling.

99

Thanks! But the operative word is not “when”, but “if”. :smiley:

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if I bit off more than I could chew with this place … OTOH, it was relatively inexpensive considering the neighbourhood.

100

cue 70s porn music

Heh I see what you mean … but take it from me, you never want to deal with that woven grass stuff. It took three solid days of hard work to get off.

If I ever get a new box spring, that’s what I’ll get.

In this case, the store was good about it, thus ensuring a loyal customer for future purchases.

I did feel sorta bad about the fact that they shipped it out here for nothing, though.