To fire or not to fire, that is the question???
Back in 2007 when we bought our property that we currently live in, we gave it a full gut. We being Yannick, myself, his brother Damon and on occasion our girls. It was a three bedroom bungalow on a ravine. There was no TV room anywhere, not a great selling feature with three young women in the house, only one bathroom on the main floor, (there was a small grungy bathroom in the basement that I honestly wouldn’t even allow my dogs to use), suffice it to say the house needed lots of work to make it a fully functioning home for five full size humans. We didn’t have a lot of time, six weeks from possession to closing of our current home. Plus we had ZERO money. We were BROKE. We had to use our Home Depot, don’t pay for 18 months card, we had to open other cards for flooring and carpeting so we could lay floors on the main floor and carpet in the basement. We were on a serious deadline. We had no fucking around room on this renovation. And three adults got it done. We moved in and the only things missing were some brand new floors for the main living space (we had run out of credit)and the new windows, which would come in the spring, also on “don’t pay.”
What is the point of my post? The point is that with six weeks and a limited budget we renovated an ENTIRE HOUSE. A whole house. Plumbing, heating, bathrooms, a kitchen and relocating the water main, and furnace. In SIX WEEKS. Our General Contractor and his merry band of can’t get three bathrooms RENOVATED in NINE WEEKS, with an “unlimited budget” and they are making me want to choke a puppy. And you all know how much I love puppies!! So you can imagine how incredibly frustrated and angry I am about how this all played out over here on the renovations. The key word here folks is RENOVATIONS, not BUILD. For two of the three bathrooms everything is in the exact same spot as it was when they started, just with new fixtures, tiles and vanities. And yet they couldn’t get it done. They didn’t get it done.
In fact I had to threaten to fire the GC today if he didn’t get his workers over her to install the four brand new windows. Then I left the property. I’ve just returned after being gone for SIX HOURS, five workers managed to install ONE WINDOW.
ONE WINDOW in six hours with FIVE MEN.
I CAN’T EVEN. I’m beside myself with not only frustration, but also curiosity. Doesn’t it make economic sense to “get in and get out”??? Like why would any contractor want to be working on three bathrooms for nine weeks? I just don’t get it. It truly makes me go “hmmm” like where is the money in any of it? There can’t be any. Now I find myself at the place where I have to ask myself: do I fire him based on principal for messing up some detail of this incredibly simple job on a daily basis, or knowing that I cannot fly back to Cali to check on any more work that remains do I just suck it up let this GC finish the job and never, ever, as long as I live hire him to step foot on my property ever again.
Hmmm…hmmm…hmmm…