vulgarweed: (buggre_by_dwightsredshoes)
[personal profile] vulgarweed
No, actually, they were already here. My landlord's work crew, to fix the two (2!) separate leaks in my apartment. (One over the bathtub that dripped when the upstairs neighbors took a shower and one in the front room that dripped when it rained.) OK guys, worked fast, got the new drywall up and it looks pretty much the same (to my jaded eye that has no particular concern for interior visuals).

The one who spoke a little English was even a cat lover and bonded with Madimi, so I knew he wouldn't be reckless about letting her out. For her part, for the first half hour she was all like, "Who's that! What's that noise!" doing her little meerkat pose. Then she went to sleep.

For my part, I bristle cause I'm territorial and don't like strange men in my very small living space, but the worst part was the timing.

8:00 in the goddamn morning? Is that shit really necessary? Why are construction workers so obsessed with the crack of dawn? (Insert "carpenter crack" joke here.)

I'm tempted to study the trades just so I can show up to work during my own peak hours of alertness and talent and the hours of most of my work for pay: roughly 10 PM to 3 AM. Hey, it's just a belt sander, don't mind me. Just gotta knock out this moldy drywall, just go about your business! What, you're asleep? In your jammies at this hour? You're wasting the best part of the day! **disapproving look, subtle implication that you must not have to really work for a living.**

They were nice guys. I'd drink vodka with 'em any day. But I'm discovering tonight that two of my windows leak too, and I'm not going to tell my landlord for another month or two. I need to recover.

Date: 2008-09-14 04:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lacewood-lune.livejournal.com
Mmmmm...this whole conversation, and your comment specifically, brings to mind *many* an odd interaction with our contractor, Wayne Earp (yes, you *did* read that right, and that *is* his real name). Fortunately we love the guy. He's, well, a "character", in the truest sense of the word; an ol' Virginia boy with a mouth full of chaw t'bacca such that half the time you have to pause and suss out just exactly what it was he just said (mumbled, really) in your head before you can reply to him. But he shows up when he says he's going to and doesn't leave 'til he's done, and for that alone he's worth his weight in gold. Amazing how many contractors will rip shit apart and then disappear for 3 weeks or more without a peep -- or at least this is what I hear from everybody else, and I guess that's true for fence guys too because we've been trying to get a fence for 3 years now...sheesh. But I digress. Wayne, for all his quirks, is awesome, and the only contractor I've ever heard of who actually charges *less* than the estimate if the project actually came in under budget. And shows up within minutes all aflurry if there's even the slightest suspicion that there might be a problem with anything he did. I could sing his praises for hours -- but the point of all my rambling is that we live in a truly deranged little house. Rather, the house is great, but the guy who lived here before us was deranged, and did some truly bizarre and unfortunate things to our house. Mostly we fix it ourselves because we can't afford not to. But when necessary we bring in Wayne, who never ceases to be amazed at the bizarre messes he uncovers. Which leads to conversations like this one:

Wayne: "Damn. What say we go find that guy who lived here before & go smack him around a bit?
my husband: "Wayne, we can't. He's dead.
Wayne: "Huh. Well. Howsabout you & me go down to bar, have ourselves a few beers, and then go piss on his grave?"

Yep. And yes, that conversation actually happened.

Anyway, I'm rambling (again). But what I *really* meant to tell you was that yeah, sure, we're the customers, so we dictate terms -- NOT. We joked once to Wayne about having to find another contractor and he just laughed at us and said, "You can't *find* another contractor willing to work on *this* house."

Uh huh. And the thing of it is, he's probably right.

December 2021

S M T W T F S
   123 4
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 20th, 2025 10:48 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios
OSZAR »