Woody just texted me that people weren't able to get a hold of me, so I thought I would take a look and post here. I have been on a house renovation project for my daughter for the last three and a half months and have been pretty much out of touch. I hope to be back by the end of the week, but as with everything I have been dealing lately, something always seems to come up and make my life more complicated. Two of my vehicles have been in accidents in the last three months while parked, one of which - my daughter's - got totaled after being hit by a felon fleeing police after backing into a police cruiser in an F350 snow plow truck. She got my daily driver as a replacement after I finished converting it to AWD working over 24 hours in two days between the holidays. (Huge thanks to the shop that let me use a lift and lots of tools while they were closed for the holidays.)
So, no Covid (thankfully), acts of sedition or other craziness. I am just plain working 12-18hrs on a house. If is were possible to find good, reasonable contractors that even show up, (pick one, and only one) I would have been done a month ago or more. I have ended up doing just about everything myself, after spending too much money paying people that would randomly show up and do lousy work, only to end up redoing what I had already paid to have done so it would be done right. I must say that I have a pretty bad opinion of a lot of tradesmen these days. I have not found a single contractor who would do a better job than I could. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC, concrete guys, so called "handy men", etc. Oh, you want it to code? It seems like standard operating procedure is to do the bare minimum necessary to get the job done with no concern for quality or for the guy who has to work on the job after you, leave a mess and expect prompt and full payment. Oh, and show up three days late to the job with lots of excuses in your new$70k diesel pickup. Once you get paid, you don't even answer phone calls to fix what you said you would, because once the money changes hands the job is done. One plumber even hit my Jeep with his box truck, doing about $3k in damage, and only told me after another guy asked if he was going to tell me that he crushed the fender and ripped off my bumper. After a month of that kind of sh#t, I took the phase "If you want it done right, do it yourself" to heart. It may take a while, but it will be right.
The quality of work done by the craftsmen that build the 105 year old house I am working on is amazing, even though it is a humble two bedroom, one bath house. You can tell that those guys took pride in their work. I have had to peel off probably 60+ years worth of neglect, poorly executed updates and just plain people messing it up. Even without considering the tools they had, this house is straighter, more plumb and more solid than the new construction I see. I hope I am doing right by the original builders of this house in bringing it back to life. In the end, my daughter will have a solid, safe home that will hopefully still be here in another 100 years.
Sorry about the rant. I would MUCH rather be repairing cr@ppy 20 year old corroded immobilizers than what I did for the last few months. Great character building learning experience. I have sooo much character now.
