If you're ever thinking about remodeling a house...

DON'T DO IT! It's not worth the pain!

Buddy has promised us for the 537th time that today will be the last day and our tile will be finished today. I'm not holding my breath.

Rudy came out on Friday to set up the electrical on our hot water heater because the plumbers lied and didn't hook it up how they were supposed to. We now have hot water. However, the plumbers messed something up when they were working on our house and so our shower does not work. The sink and the toilet work, but the shower has no water running to it. They didn't call us back until today. They're going to try to fit us in today. If I have to pour water into my tub via Solo cups from the sink again tonight, someone is going to pay for it. Well, actually, I'm just going to take it out of their pay. For my suffering. People sue for those kinds of things all the time! :)

Also, we were paying the plumbers over $4,000 to replace all of the cast iron pipes under the house (~$2,000 for the pipes going into the house and ~$2,000 for the pipes going out of the house). They told Joe that they didn't replace a few of them because they were in such good shape, so they offerered to take a few hundred dollars off of the bill. First of all, we told them to replace all of the pipes no matter what condition they were in (cast iron will rust and deteriorate and PVC will not... we didn't want to have to worry about it down the line... just get it all over with now). And next, when the shower didn't work, Joe crawled under the house to check to see if they forgot to turn something on. They haven't replaced ANY of the pipes going out of the house. So, a few hundred dollars is not going to cut it. Try a discount of over $2,000. I think that they were counting on Joe not checking to see if the pipes were replaced! I mean, anyone could look and tell that they haven't been replaced. They are still cast iron instead of being PVC pipe! These plumbers are obvious crooks. Also, we paid them to install a shutoff valve in one of the closets because we didn't want to have to turn it off from under the house. Well, they installed one but it DOESN'T WORK!!! Why is everyone we hire so damn completely incompetent!?!?! It doesn't make any sense at all.

The house is a complete mess. It's covered in a thick film of dust from all of the work that's been done. I sweep and I dust and it just doesn't help. Our stuff is still sitting in the garage until everything is finished so that we can actually move in. That should be by this weekend. Should be. Of course, it should have been over 2 weeks ago that we SHOULD have been able to move in. But here we are. Still living out of boxes sitting in our garage.

Also, I decorated my house like crazy for Halloween and our neighbors promised lots and lots of Trick-Or-Treaters. I bought over 30 pounds of candy. Good candy. We had 13 Trick-Or-Treaters. THIRTEEN. That is not lots and lots. I totally got jipped. And now I'm going to gain 10 pounds by eating that 30 lbs of candy. Hopefully it will make me feel better about the lack of Trick-Or-Treaters at my house. I also went to Walmart and got a lot of Halloween stuff half off on November 1. So, I will be prepared again next year and still hoping for lots and lots of Trick-Or-Treaters. :)

Also, one of my bestest friends came to visit me yesterday. :) Everyone needs to go see the play that he's going on tour with for 14 months. You can go here to get tickets: http://www.annieontour.com.

AAAAHHHHHHHHH!

That pretty much sums up my life right now.

Just a quick update...

1. The house is still not finished. Buddy is still not finished with the tile despite all of the promises to be done by the time we got back. I don't think he even started until yesterday. Buddy didn't even touch the tile in the half bathroom. The kitchen STILL is not finished. The master bath is starting to resemble a bathroom now, but it is probably going to take Buddy weeks to get any further. However, if he's not finished by this weekend, he should be hung until dead for being such an imbecile. The plumbers did not do all they were supposed to do and now we have no hot water (which is an absolutely wonderful thing to come home to... NOT!). Our hardwood floors have been refinished. They look wonderful. The countertops were delayed. Again. They're supposed to be in next week. They won't tell us an exact date. Jerks. The plumbing in the kitchen can't be finished in the kitchen until the countertops are put in, so we have no water in the kitchen either.
   
   
2. The GraphExpo was incredibly boring. I met some people. I wandered around and got blisters on my feet. Joe and I went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum while we were there. We also just wandered around the city. We had to do some shopping on Sunday when we arrived because we couldn't do laundry before we left (the plumbers cancelled 3 times in a row so we had no water), and therefore, we had no clothing to pack. I got some new clothes out of it, so at least something positive came out of it.
   
   
3. We are almost finished with the house in Crackton. I am leaving work early today to finish cleaning it up and to do some touch up painting (the power will be turned off at 4:30 today). All of our stuff is out of that house. And most of it is sitting in the garage in Shelby. We started moving some stuff in last night. However, there is only so much we can do when we can't use our bedroom, our bathroom, the half-bath, or the kitchen. It's so incredibly frustrating.

It was nice to at least have a few days away from it all. Now, I'm way behind at work, and only the tiniest bit further to being done. Yay.

Someone is going to get hurt...

Well, we had to call an electrician to get the kitchen ready for our new cabinets and appliances. No one would call us back until yesterday. He wanted to tear out walls to fix it and he was going to charge us $1,300. And then we'd still have to fix the freakin' walls! Rudy, our tech here at work, offered to do it for $500 and not tear out all of the walls. So, he came over last night to do it. We were there until 1:30 AM. He's still not finished because part of it has to wait until the cabinets are in. So, we'll be finishing that up on Thursday night. It's such a pain in the rear.

The drywall is about finished. Larry said that he was finished, but Sammy is making him come back to redo one corner of the half bath. It wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. Joe and I were just going to let it go, but Sammy didn’t want us to feel shafted. It’s the corner next to the door where there are just a few inches of wall. The floors upstairs still aren’t done. He went back and sanded them another time and he sanded the stairs. Then he had to pull staples out of the living room floor because Joe never finished his job. He’s going to be doing the staining today. And sanding the downstairs. He said that the staining upstairs shouldn’t take long.

Buddy didn’t show up yesterday. He didn’t answer any of Joe’s phone calls. He did tell us that he’d be working on another job yesterday, but it wouldn’t take all day. I’m ready to kill him. When he put in the tile in the half bathroom, it looked funny to me. I thought it was because it was dirty (there was dust from the drywall all over it). Well, last night I went in and swept it up so that I could get a real look at it. It’s 2 different tiles in there. There are 5 tiles of what we actually picked out (that dark brown tile), and then the rest of the bathroom is in a dark tile with lots of reddish colors in it. And then, I was sweeping up the kitchen last night (because there was sawdust from where Rudy had to cut some of the walls for the new sockets) and stuff kept getting trapped between the tiles. He did a shitty job of grouting the tile. There are deep holes in it so stuff falls into it. So, Joe is going to make him fix the grout in the kitchen. We have to talk to him about the half bathroom.

Joe spoke to Buddy just a little while ago. He argued with Joe about the tile in the half bathroom. He thinks it's the same throughout. It's obviously not. Even Rudy just glanced at it last night and said that it was different. You don't have to look closely to see that it's 2 different tiles!

Before, Buddy told Joe that he could finish everything by Friday. Joe spoke with him the night before last. The problem was that the floor guy (refinishing the hardwoods) would be in the way of Buddy. Joe told Buddy that he worked it out with the floor guy so that he will not do the foyer until Thursday. That meant that Buddy could continue working on the other bathrooms until Thursday or possibly Friday (depending on the speed of the floor guy). Well, Buddy told Joe that night that he had everything worked out with the floor guy. Since Joe had already told him what the plan was, Joe assumed that working it out meant that he was going to follow the plan. That was a stupid assumption. Buddy isn’t over there today. What he meant when he said, “worked it out” with Maurice is that he just isn’t going to show up again until next week so that he could stay out of the way.

Joe told him that it was unacceptable. We have to get our stuff moved in! We will be gone Sunday through Thursday and we have to be out of Crackton by Friday! He needs to be finished! Since he said that he could be done with everything by Friday, that meant that he should have been able to be finished with at least the master bath by Thursday! Which meant that we could move in! Now who knows how long it’s going to be. If one more thing goes wrong with Buddy, I’m going to call him myself and cuss him out. I don’t think Joe is getting his point across well enough. Why does this have to be so difficult? Joe told him what to do and he changed it. It’s stupid.

But, on the positive, our cabinets arrived yesterday. They were in boxes in our garage. We opened up one to look at it. It was hard to see the cabinet, but it looked pretty! It looked a little more red than I had anticipated, but right now it’s hard to tell. They’re in the garage and it wasn’t very well lit and it was still in a box. So, we’ll be able to tell tonight! :) I think they’ll look really good.

I'm trying to stay positive about all of this. No matter what, Joe and I have to be moved in on next Friday (Halloween). If everything is not finished, I am going to have a conniption. I take that back, I will accept it if the half bathroom is not completely finished yet. However, if anything else is still unfinished, someone is going to pay for it. We set it up so that everything would be finished last week. My mom left a week ago. They still aren't finished with the things that were supposed to be finished when she got here 2 weeks ago. I can tell you one thing. People asked us to give recommendations for workers after we finish remodeling our house. Buddy and Paul will be getting no recommendations. I will be telling people to stay as far away as possible. This is f*@#ing ridiculous.

Samples

So... Since everything is already picked out, I'm putting up samples! :)


This is the color of our countertops (Dupont Zodiac Quartz in Black Forest).





This is the color of our kitchen floor tile (Ozark Sand).







This is what our dishwasher is going to look like.





This is basically what our microwave/vent will look like.

This is basically what our range/oven will look like.









This is basically what our refrigerator will look like.

I hope that everything is going to look nice together. We put it together on a small scale and it looked great (I don't have a sample of the cabinets, but they're cherry wood with a ginger finish and a chocolate glaze. Also, the paint pulls it together better... it's Slate Green but I can't find the color online). I'm worried that it won't look as good together on a larger scale. I guess we'll find out very soon.

Oh. Joe told me that we have to paint the upstairs bathroom immediately (I was going to put it off for a while since we have so much other stuff to do that's more important). Apparently that's on the list for the appraisal to come back correctly, so it has to be done. It doesn't look like we'll be going to Texas this weekend after all, so I will probably start on that this weekend (and hopefully get it finished!). Wish us luck!