I’m not an exceptional person in most regards, but I do have one fairly unique personality trait: I’m almost never angry, about anything. I think I could count my adult moments of pure wrath on half the fingers of one hand.
Right now I’m so angry I can barely think. I guess I have mostly myself to blame, but that doesn’t make it any better.
My wife and I bought our house in March. We knew going in that the house needed a new roof, and we also wanted to get dormers installed in two upstairs bedrooms. A new neighbor across the street was having some construction done, and highly recommended the contractor working for him. We met the contractor and his brother, who seemed both friendly and competent. We called references, and the word was that these guys were “not the fastest workers, but they do very good work.” They have all the permits and such – they’re legit contractors, and not some fly-by-night operation. We hired them to do a small job first (repairs on our front steps) to get a sense of how they worked, and they did a solid, professional and timely job.
So this summer we talked with them about the larger job, and on Oct. 13 we signed a contract wherein they’d repair/replace the roof and install two dormers. They didn’t think it would be a big job – about two weeks of total work. Given that they’re contractors, I figured that would be more like 4 weeks, but that was okay, if the work was good.
Things started out well. For about a week the framer and his team were at the house every day working, and every night they’d leave a big tarp over the whole roof to keep water out. A week later and the dormers were structurally built, though just the wood – no siding. They did shingle the dormer-roofs.
Around that time we came home one day to find the tarp was off. That seemed like a good sign – they must be nearly done making it all weatherproof. But that day was actually the beginning of a weeks-long period where the roofers basically disappeared. We expressed concern to the main contractor (“Eric,” I’ll call him – not his real name) that it wasn’t weather-sealed – we could even see daylight through the seams in the plywood walls of the dormers. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s exterior-grade plywood – it can stand getting wet.”
A couple of days later, it had rained a good deal, and my wife and I noticed that the plywood floors on the inside of the dormers – interior flooring – was getting fairly soaked from rain coming in. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Shouldn’t we put the tarp back up?” we asked. “Shouldn’t be an issue,” he said.
[ASIDE]
We’re now in something like week seven of this two-week job. Eric has come in a few times to do some actual work – electrical stuff, draining the solar heating system, putting in some new insulation – but there have been several times when he has told us he’d be in the house on day X, then not show up, not return calls until day X+1, at which point he promised he and the relevant subcontractors would be by on day X+2, without any good explanation. And the new roof – that gets me pretty mad. The front of the roof is done, but the back is not, and now it looks like that might have to wait until spring. When we started the job in October, my wife said to Eric, “I’ve read that there are parts of roof replacement that can only be done if it’s warmer than 40 degrees. Will it be a problem that we’re starting so late?” Says Eric: “We’ll be done long before it’s an issue. Don’t worry” Well, that turned out to be the proverbial crock of crap, since the back of the roof still isn’t done, and here in Boston we may well have seen the last 40 degree non-rainy day before March. But I digress. That’s galling, but not why I’m writing.
[/ASIDE]
After expressing concern to Eric numerous times that our dormers-in-progress were still not weather-tight and now without tarps, and after being told numerous times not to worry, our house is now seriously leaking, on the first floor, DIRECTLY BENEATH THE $#@! DORMERS! It’s 2:00 in the morning, and as it rains outside we find that water is dripping heavily into our living room through a seam above a bay window. Sure enough, directly above, on the second floor, is the wet patch on the plywood dormer-floor where the rain is coming in. Goddamnit, Eric, what the fuck did you think was going to happen? How could a fucking contractor not understand what water can do to a house?! It’s soaking our couch, dampening the carpet, drenching the bay window ledge, and Og only knows what havoc it’s wreaking on our house’s internal structure.
And it’s just as bad on the other side. In the room on the first floor under the other dormer, where there’s just a normal wall-and-window, there are now creeping stains on the ceiling, and water is dripping in slowly through the window sill. I reached up to touch the ceiling right where it meets the wall above the window, and the stucco-like ceiling texture was a damp sludge that came away on my finger. For all I know the ceiling is about to collapse! We have pretty much every towel and spare sheet in the house spread out under the leaks, trying to spare various wooden and carpeted surfaces.
I’m not cut out to be the “bad cop,” and I’ve cut Eric and his team all kinds of slack for his schedule slippage. But now we’re talking potential heavy damage to the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought and owned, because our $#@! contractor couldn’t figure out that leaving uncovered exterior construction open to the rain could cause FUCKING WATER TO GET IN. First thing in the morning I’m going to call Eric and… and…and I don’t know what. On the one hand, I feel like tearing him a new soffit vent, and using some words that I haven’t uttered since I dropped a dorm fridge on my foot back in college. On the other hand, I don’t know that it’s wise to piss off the person whom I want to fix his goddamn mess.
(Note: we do have a written contract detailing the work and milestone schedule, and while it doesn’t mention damage to the house, it does say that the work is “guaranteed for one year.” Maybe I can stretch that to mean that their work is “guaranteed not to fuck up the rest of the house.” They had damn well better agree to pay for any repairs necessitated by their incompetence. And they’re not getting another cent out of us (there are still some thousands of dollars left to be paid) until everything is fixed and complete.)
And to top it all off, the now-dampened sofa in the living room is also the sofa-bed where my 7-months-pregnant wife is sleeping, because our actual bed is upstairs, where it’s freezing cold because we can’t turn on the heat because the house isn’t sealed. Her back is aching from the substandard “mattress” and now she’s getting spattered with droplets of water from a leaky roof. My hands are shaking – literally shaking – with anger as I write this. I’ve never honestly wished bodily harm on another human being in my life, but if Eric was teleported in front of me right now, I don’t know that I wouldn’t plant my fist in his gut, and use his wheezing carcass to sop up the rain-water.
I hope I’ve calmed down by tomorrow morning. I’m not used to this kind of anger, and it’s pissing me off.
-P
