They started on our house on March 9th.... they finished the promised 7-10 day job on April 9th... I'm not the best person in the world at math but that made it more than 7-10 days, right?? I shall start with the fact that they tried not to fix all the woodwork in the doors that they were supposed to fix. Minor, right? They did better after I pointed it out but still not great... I'll probably be patching it here in a few months.
The paint - the colors are great! WE did a good job on that. However, the quality of their paint job was horrible. There were gaps between the trim and walls (how does that freakin' happen?), spots where they obviously did not get the 2nd coat and was waaaaaaaaaay more visible, and then just spots they somehow just missed completely. They also did not take off all the wall-paper in the bathrooms and kitchens and we had to pull it off and point it out to be textured and painted.... You might be wondering how that happened, as well... I don't have a good explanation for it, so your thoughts/imagination can fill in the gaps just like ours did...
Don't even get me started on the trim... I basically had to re-do all the trim in the master bath and around all the windows in the kitchen. I also had to re-do all the caulking in the bathrooms - they were supposed to do that as well but they obviously did it prior to painting - I'm sure that would not be horrible but add that on top of the already crappy painting job and it becomes bad! And, it turns out - you have to tell them that ALL nails have to be taken out of the walls. But, they did take out the ones they wanted to. When pointed out to the owner - he said that he was not told to take out the nails. When I asked him why other nails around the house were taken out - well, lets just say he did not have an answer for that an appropriately stayed quiet.
Then, the nails they did take out - some they bothered to spackle before re-painting, some they did not, and then some - they tried to push in the wall (only 1 - but still, really??). Again, no good answer from the owner. There was paint all over my new floors in the bathrooms - they did a decent job cleaning it up. They actually "finished" (a term I use looser than Pamela Anderson is) in 7 working days (including a Saturday night that they did not leave until 830pm!) they said to do a walk-thru. I laughed. Literally. Laughed some more and sat down and wrote a 5 page word document outlining all that was wrong with the site.
So, I was told that the touch-ups would take no more than 1 day, 1 1/2 days tops. 4 freakin' days later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still wasn't done. I kicked them out of my house. At that point, I'm going to do it. Did I mention that they tried to paint my kitchen pantry shelves in the wall color, despite me telling them that if it was trim color to begin with - it stayed the new trim color. They tried to do the same damn thing in my master bathroom linen closet and the hall closet. When asked about that - I was told that they must have over-looked the original color. Again, how? The old oil based paint looked totally different and FELT different than the wall based color. Again, no decent (notice my reduction of expectations here!) answer given.
I kicked their asses out of my house. My partner and I then spent all that weekend getting our house finished in the paint department. My list of what we had to do covered ALL FREAKIN' ROOMs. I had to do the paint on the walls around all the windows in every room. Some required all the way around and some just required around the window sills. Still, really? The master bedroom seams between the ceiling and walls needed paint almost all the way around the entire room. There was a bit of wall between the 2nd and 3rd bedroom doorways. Somehow, this area got almost entiredly overlooked - There was some color so that had to at least see it and put the brush to touch it but that was obviously it.
Want the coo-de-ta? (I know that's probably nowhere near what the actual spelling is, but it was fun to say out loud and try to sound out - Hookied on Fonicks worked for me!!!) Since the entire house was getting painted, my partner and I figured we'd get new registers for the a/c vents and all new hardware to put around all the light/plug/data line fixtures. Guess what we found when we took the old ones off? Almost 1/2 of the plates HAD NEVER FREAKIN' BEEN TAKEN OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously?? I know that's something you DON'T have to explicitly tell the painter to do. Matter of fact, I was EXPLICIT in my directions to the owner when I got the bid and when I agreed to use him, that all hardware was to be removed from all walls. (Oh yeah, they did not take any of the hardware off in the bathrooms and kitchen and guess what that meant - wall paper still there). I had caught the big portions (one portion was roughly 8x10 size in master bath) luckily. So, when we took off the phone line cover in the kitchen - wall paper. Data line in the office - old paint completely behind it. Cable line in the 2nd bedroom - not only was it not taken off but the old one was COVERED in the paint. Not to mention the 3 wall plugs that are now painted the same color as the wall - the actual piece that the cord plugs into that has to be reset into the wires to fix (luckily the honey works well with electricity!). One of the new a/c registers in the 2nd bathroom was also covered in paint - I pointed that out and they cleaned it.
Seriously? I'm still shocked that I'm not in the hospital getting IV solumedrol. And, I have NOT even gotten to the shocker yet!!!!!!!! Ready for it? Seriously, I know you're asking yourself why you did not get that 3rd glass of wine or the 4th beer before starting this blog?
We woke up that 1st Sunday after they had gotten to the kitchen to start peeling wallpaper and texturing. Well, I should say that when my other half woke up - I sleep in on the weekends. Anyways, there was water all over the kitchen floor. Mind you, this is on top of all the brown paper they had laid on the floor. My honey figures out that moving the fridge, they had stripped the copper water connection to our fridge. Not too hard to fix for her - a trip to Home Depot and we've got the tools and supplies. Guess what we found when we pulled up the brown paper on the floor? OVER 20 FUCKIN (I'm over freakin at this point) TEARS INTO THE KITCHEN LINOLIUM. Seriously. I counted. There were 28 in front of our kitchen. Really? The fridge has wheels on it. To move it. Easily. Not fast. Slow. Carefully.
Because of that, I go and check the one other area where appliances had to be moved - the washer/dryer. Guess what I found? Only 1 tear, but it was a doozy (almost 2 inches on one side). Guess what? The workers had tried to cover up the tears in front of the fridge. They had literally tried to glue some of them back down. Wanna know how I know? Because when I got down on my stomach to look at a couple of the visible tears (really, were we not going to notice? Or, they were going to try and make it not noticable until they were gone and therefore no liability?) I found the other ones. I went through the roof. Now, I'm your normal American mutt - English, Irish, Polish (and blonde - I really never had a chance) German, Cherokee, and Czech - but once I hit boiling I cannot hold back the red in me! I had the project manager and the project boss over at my house that Sunday evening and they actually did the right thing then - immediately advising they would replace it and asked if a patch job would be okay. Of course it would - I've seen those guys that do floors and I've seen some patch jobs I would never guess. I gave them the chance.
Again, DISAPPOINTED LIKE HELL! They really thought the patch job that wasn't laid flat, did not follow the seams, and didn't glue down one corner would be acceptable. Then, they really thought the patch job in the laundry room would be good. I wish I still had the pics - it was even more comical. Again, the owner comes out to my house again and says the right thing and says he will replace the entire floor. The moral of the story is if you live in the Houston metro area - DO NOT USE UNIQUE BUILDERS for any of your home projects. I advised them that not only did all my friends and neighbors know about my horrible experience, all my co-workers also know, AND I did something even worse... I put it on Facebook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And, of course here. I think I need to add a few more crappy words to the title - first thing I'm going to do after I publish this post is try a Google search. So, if the title changes a few times in the next couple of days. You know why.
WOW - I think this is my longest post yet!!!!!!! Would it be weird to say I'm actually more excited it was about something other than MS - that means I've been doing good!
Oh, what happened with the kitchen floor you ask? They ended up giving us cost on ceramic tile in there and we accepted their offer. They did that okay - there were a few too many popped bubbles in the grout for my tastes but again, I kicked them out of my house! AND THEY'RE NEVER FUCKING COMING BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 comment:
I hope you achieve your goal of having this post come up anytime someone in Houston searches on "unique builders." Yowza! I read your post with disbelief. I'm hopeful not one dollar has exchanged hands from you two to them (unless it's gone to you).
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