Fights, Drywall and Water... OH MY!!

It wasn't until this past Friday when my contractors said "You know Miss Vicki, we haven't seen anything new on your blog in almost a MONTH!" did I realize A) just how long it had been since I had sat down to blog and B) just how much I have been living at the church without actually LIVING there.  So let's catch up shall we?

I last left you with my frustrations with the drywall guy not finishing the job.  Well let me tell you just how much this became a HUGE ordeal.  The gentleman (and I am using this term VERY sarcastically) decided that he was indeed finished the job and began to insist on payment.  When he called my contractor, Allan said "REALLY?!!! You think you are done?!!! You are NOT getting paid until the full job is complete.  You need to call Victoria".  Well he did not do this but he DID tell Allan that he was going to take Allan's dump trailer that is parked at the church as payment.  William called the gentleman to discuss the situation.  Now at this point I need to explain just how level headed my husband is.  If there is yelling to be done it is always me.  I'm sure there is some Italian heritage in my family somewhere as we are the "passionate" type of people when frustrated.  I was shocked to witness my husband turning red and yelling... that's right YELLING at this guy.  Will got so frustrated that he hung up. When we still thought he was going to come and finish Allan had circled and wrote in pencil on the walls to show where work still needed to be done.  He asked us to go over and do the same if he missed anything.

 

Along with all the drawing on the walls, there was no tape or mud done on the kitchen or bedroom windows and huge sections that were not even begun in the bathroom.  The day after William called, I called to be the level headed one (a first in our relationship!).  When I called this gentleman called me a few choice names and told me he was going to put a lean on our house and take us to small claims court.  I kept my cool and explained exactly where in the basement I was not happy and the reasons why we were refusing to pay the remaining money (we had paid half before the job was started).  Once he heard what I said he offered to come and fix the issues.  I told him thank you for the offer but the job he had quoted as a 4 day job was now into its third week and I had seen the quality of his work.  There was roughly two days of work done and he was paid for those days, so we would no longer be needing his services.  The conversation ended with him telling me he would see me in court and me responding that I was looking forward to it. 

The issue then became who was going to finish the work?  This conversation was at the beginning of the Canada Day long weekend (July 1st) and the guys were already booked for vacations.  So guess who ended up doing the work... :)

I spent 12 hour days for the whole weekend.  Will finished work on the Friday and came out to also spend the whole weekend on this not so fun little project.

These pictures are during the fun of sanding (anyone who has had to sand drywall knows just how terrible this job is.  We did around 1500 square feet.)

Will had just washed his hands.  Look at the colour difference!

After days and days of mudding, taping and sanding we had a much better job done.

Around this time is when all that rain happened in Saskatchewan.  It was so bad that we debated if we should go out and see if the mud was dry as it was going to be hard to see on the highway.  SO glad we did as when we got to the church we had two feet of water from the sump pump corner to the bathroom and half way into the kitchen.  We spent the day sucking up water.  Will had to drive back to Regina for a new sump pump as ours had died.  No pics of this as at the time I was not thinking "this would be great for a blog post!"

We also tore down old ugly terrible drywall from the upstairs hallway that weekend.

When Allan got back from his vacation he did some of the mud/taping that we as people who do not do drywall for a living didn't know needed to be done a certain way.

I'm happy to report we are now back on track.  I was smart enough to still take a ton of pictures as work has been done.  But as this has now turned into a novel instead of a blog post, I will leave it here for now.