Home Renovations??: Rant About it Here

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T

twiggers

O.G.
May 7, 2006
33,003
32
#1
OK...I need to rant...and I KNOW there has to be other tPFers doing home renovations too!

I am working on my basement...have completely gutted it, walls are up, drywalled & sanded (with the exception of one small room because we are waiting on a plumber quote and if it's outrageous we'll make it a storage room instead of a bathroom). Now today I am doing primer....of a 1400 sq. ft. basement :cursing: I haven't even finished the walk in closet and I want to kill someone!!!
And hubby...such a sweetheart...says 'oh...I'll go out tonight and stay out of your hair' UGH men!!!!!

After the primer, I have to paint, lay hardwood floors & carpet & some vinyl flooring, stain baseboards & trim and hang them, and then decorate. Oh...and my upstairs still needs one bedroom, kitchen & living room painted...and I'm redoing all my flower beds (all 10 of them!). UGH!

Hubby says I should hire someone...but that would take away from the bag fund LOL

OK that's my rant right now...please ladies/gents...rant about anything that has to do with house renovations....
paint color look ugly? rant about it!
contractor running late? rant about it!
bought the wrong color of something? rant about it!

I guess I just want to know that I am not alone!!!!
 
#2
I'll complain for my mom since she doesn't post here. She bought a new house two years ago and is finally get the basement finished/re-done. The contractor is an idiot. He already has half her money and she's feeling stuck right now. It was supposed to be finished before memorial day weekend. They wound up starting that Wednesday. They worked all memorial day weekend on demo, and have been back twice since for a few short hours. All their equipment it there and nobody is showing up. He is not returning her phone calls and nobody else from the company is responding to her. She's so upset. It's the first time as a single woman she's trusted someone to come into her home and do work and now she's been taken. She's meeting with a lawyer Monday to see what can be done. I feel horrible for her.
 
#3
Oh you are definitely not alone! I'm not doing as major of work as you, but I am in the process of getting new carpet and vinyl flooring and it is the most infuriating process ever.

I went to Lowes, picked out the carpet and vinyl. The contractor came to measure and Lowes gave me a price quote - all simple enough. So, I went and signed the contract and paid in full. Lowes said it would take 7-10 business days for the flooring to come in, then the contractor would call to set up an appointment.

Well, 7-10 days turned into 4 weeks and no sign of my flooring, yet the payment on my credit card was due :confused1: So, I called up Lowes and long story short, one of the vinyl patterns I ordered hadn't been made by the vendor in 4 years.Well, this Lowes location has only been open for 3 years, so the sample should have never even been on display in the first place.:cursing:

So, I tell Lowes to just cancel that portion of my order but to get the carpet and other vinyl pattern ASAP. I finally get an appointment to have the carpet installed and the contractor cancelled at the last minute - AFTER I had already moved all the furniture and taken a vacation day from work.:mad:

I had Lowes send a different contractor to do the installation because at this point, it had been about 6 weeks since I placed the order and I finally got the carpet installed.

But....the rest of the vinyl never showed up:wtf::censor:. I got so fed up I finally had Lowes cancel my entire vinyl order.

At this point, I am so sick of flooring issues that I have given up. Maybe I'll try again in a few months.

Oh, and I was in Lowes again last night, and the flooring that hasn't been made in 4 years...yeah, the samples are STILL on display :rolleyes::weird:

Whew...glad I got that off my chest ;)
 
#4
I have 1800 sq ft of flooring piled up in my front hall waiting to be installed, the light switch and phone jack in the kitchen are currently hanging on a wire coming out of the kitchen ceiling and my SO doesn't like the THIRD set of revisions to the kitchen plan.

We are going to meet with the kitchen designer again on Monday and I will let her deal with his pig-headedness.

Of course what really sucks is that she will probably agree with all of his ideas.

I HATE IT WHEN HE IS RIGHT!!!!

Did I mention that about half of the carpet in the house is pulled up and there are various random holes in the walls here and there?:cursing:
 
#5
Can I complain about the road construction outside of the house? We haven't been able to park in our driveway since mid-April. It wasn't so bad at first, since we're in a corner house and could park on the side-street (just had to go out of our way to get there because of road blocks), but lately it's been overflowing with work trucks and other cars, so we've been parking over a block away.

It's getting very, very old. It looks like they might be getting ready to repave it soon, at least I hope so. It's so annoying!
 
#7
In our one house our contractor must have hired who ever to be his helpers. I had beautiful pergo floor installed in a stencil pattern in my foyers and after it is done the guy doing the work says "oh, I did really good for my first time installing pergo", then he insisted the pergo wood that would go where the wood and carpet meets can't be done, he wanted to put the ugly metal one that was there. So his boss had to do it. The other contractor put a hole in the radiator pipe that flooded down the basement wall the next day when I went down there you could just see water running down the wall. The plumber put a hole in a dummy pipe in the bathroom and water got all over my new pergo floor. The electricians did some electric work wrong and when we were selling the house the inspector took one kitchen outlet off and the inside was literally black-burnt--a fire waiting to happen. The contractor put the wrong washer pipe in so your washer water would not fill up the washer but just kept draining...... I am sure there was more, after 6 months of renovations we sold the house for our asking price and were never so happy to leave.....I will never own a old house again.
 
#8
we just moved into our new house (it's old, but new to us anyway) and after 23 odd years of sharing a bathroom, i finally get my own! i've installed all the new hardware and lighting and fixtures.. all i need to do now is PAINT and for the love of god i can't find the PERFECT SHADE OF GRAY to paint it!!

my bathroom has a NYC/London City Chic look/feel to it, vanity & medicine cabinet in stark black, tub & surround in stark white. hardware in a brushed nickel finish. I even got a new toilet seat cover in a pretty stainless steel look to compliment. But finding the right shade of Gray is so incredibly hard. *stress*

i find it funny that i work in a home furnishings store and i can't match things or get things done for my own home. i think the problem here is that my store is very french-american-traditional, and i am very euro-modern. lol..
 
#10
I don't have a home renovation to rant about but a yard one. We just recieved out estimate to have our back yard completely redone. I nearly fell out of my chair reading it. :wtf:

We did our front yard ourselves a few years ago - in the rain - and I was so traumatized by it that I want the back yard professionally done. Little did I realize that meant paying the price of a compact sedan.
 
#12
i am redoing/painting/new hardware my kitchen cabinets. i am getting there, but have lost steam. so, half the cabinets need one more coat and are sitting in the garage. i can't find harware that i like, and we are having a houseful of ppl over on sat. yet i still don't feel like painting... i think it's going to be a late night!!!
 
#13
I just bought my first home, and the entire thing is completely gutted. My fiance is a contractor, so he works on it at night and it's taking THREE times as long!!
 
#14
OH good Lord! I spent from Thanksgiving to April in remodeling H-E-double toothpicks!! The most ridiculous part is that this was only a screened in deck!
I thought I wouldnt be bothered by the endless turnover of workmen, 15% general contractors fee would insulate me from dealing with anything. HA! I called it the "Sistine screened in porch"! We were 100% over budget with with no "owner changes".
I started this project loving my workers, making them cookies etc...
By the end, I was a raving banshee.
You have my most heartfelt condolences!
 
#15
Well hubby and I moved into our house last summer and we didn't get here in time to pick out the paint colors. I tought well they are neutral...no big deal. But this spring we both decided that our whole house matched, everything is almost the same color, I can't stand it.

We have started out small by just painting and so far have only got the dining room and kitchen done. We painted the dining room red, which is beautiful but such a PITA to get looking good without putting on fifty coats! Well then we proceeded to paint the kitchen a very light creamy yellow...over top of a light green. We didn't use a primer which was mistake number 1. The kitchen painting took forever because we had to put two-three coats on before it covered the green up underneath and we had to paint above the cabinets and behind the fridge.

For the time being we have stopped..but the bedroom is next and we have this huge unique tray ceiling that is going to be a pain to paint. After this we have to fix all the cracks in the drywall from the house settling but I'm leaving that up to hubby.

In a few years we hope to build, so I'm sure I'm giong to have plenty of complaints then!
 
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