Building Disasters

Our cabinets are half way in! Finally. Our house is finally starting to come together and I am really hoping it will move quickly now. My hope is to be moving in on my birthday (next Saturday), but it is not looking good.

Our cabinets have been stacked up in the kitchen and mud room for a week now waiting for the painters to be done. I have not written about the paint disaster because every time I think about it I get so upset. Honestly, I have not slept in 4 weeks and I feel like I am getting an ulcer. I'll give a quick overview.

The first paint crew really made a mess of things. The caulk was just globbed in all over and our trim was ruined. They sprayed thin coats of paint on the trim and doors (after a few washings the paint would have started coming off), you could see the variation and overlaps of spray, they didn't even paint the tops and sides of the trim, and the baseboards feel like sandpaper (as they sprayed all the junk on the floor blew up onto them). Oh, and they would only put 2 coats of paint in my RED mudroom. They wanted to do the final 3 coats AFTER the WHITE cabinets and tile were installed. And they didn't want to do any of my bright green craft room until they came back to do touch ups. After the house sitting for a week we finally got the painters boss out to show him. He denied anything was wrong and acted like I was being ridiculous. His comment about the tops of the trim not being painted: "Well, you can't see it." We finally got him to agree to fix it. After I saw their idea of sanding and fixing the trim, I spent two days over their sanding it myself. They did send a crew that knew what they were doing this time, but the problem is they never work. Melissa and Shay live next door and watch them. This is a typical schedule: Show up at 8:30 and sit in their truck until 10:00. Work for an hour, take a 30 minute break, work another 30 minutes and them leave for lunch. Come back for about 30 min, maybe an hour and leave for the day by 1:30. After telling their boss, the boss denied that any of his workers would do that. I don't know all that was said, but our contractor was ticked. All the guy needs to do is go to our house and see how little they accomplished in the time they have been there to realize they can't possibly be working. This whole process has turned a one week job into a four week job AND they aren't even done AND there is no way to make it look like it should have. We can't afford to redo the trim which is the only way to fix it.

Okay, maybe it wasn't so quick. But that is actually the condensed version! And yes, I am a perfectionist, but no, I am not being too picky. Our contractors have been really upset by the whole thing too. One of them commented that it looked like a cheap, run down apartment paint job, not a custom home.

But my cabinets are beautiful, I love how they turned out. And the hardwood floors should be going in tomorrow!

Oh, also. We had some problems with the stucco and we had been trying to get the guy to come back and fix it. Well, a few weeks ago he died. Then, our marble shower is not finished being installed yet and this past weekend that guy died too. He was also going to do our master bathroom counter tops. Neither of them are were very old and they both had heart attacks.

I knew things were going way too smooth for us in the beginning.