So, I've been having work done on my house for over a year now.

Contractor Joe is going to go to jail. Yes, jail. I still have one bathroom undone. I have no toilet in there (the other bathroom is done, as we timed it so we'd never not have a bathroom). And the contractor not only bailed on us, but bailed on many other people ripping them off.

Fortunately we're out very very little. Under $1k. The next lowest person is out $8,000.00. Which is why Joe is gonna go to prison. Hint to you, never rip off cops, it tends to piss them off a lot.

Then we had a patio built. It leaks. It has leaked for a year. The company involved is actually good. They have spent thousands of dollars in manpower and various products trying to get it NOT to leak. It still leaks. They told us they would try one or two more things, then look at tearing it down and rebuilding it, as a defective. FINE. And I'm glad and all but just finish my fucking patio.

Oh the bathrooms were around $15k+...I'm afraid to tally up it all. And we'll be dumping another $3k in to finish it belike.

Oh we also replaced all our plumbing AND had a tankless water heater put in CHA-CHING.

Patio and other fencing, that was like $10k for the patio, and a shitload more for the fencing. A lot of fucking money I don't want to think about the actual amounts. Really.

Then we had to paint the house because the eaves were peeling. We had a guy to do the eaves but he's not around, quite honestly he was probably deported. After our bad experiences with Joe the 'I have a license' but not really, unlicensed contractor, we went with licensed folk.

$3k to paint and patch. QQ, etc. It's a lot of fucking money, but it's fair.

Except some boards were rotty...and one board was a kinda important board, so he called out a roofer.

Who tells me I need a new roof. Apparently we have three roof layers up there, and they can't put on another one, and they'd have to tear it down to nothing, relay plywood blah blah blah.

$12k Or rather, $11,900 BECAUSE APPARENTLY ELEVENTY THOUSAND DOESN'T SOUND AS FUCKING BAD.

Um no.

So then the owner calls me and comes down to $10.5k I asked him if he took first born children. He said they'd consider it.

He actually paused a minute, which was scary, as though making the calculations.

The painter meanwhile was strangling on his coke, having overheard me.

So I told the painter how much it was, and told him we weren't doing it. My neighbor came out and he said it was in the ballpark of the right price, and that another neighbor paid $18k. I said for that much money I'd be up there on weekends doing it my fucking self. He said no it's difficult, I was like bull fucking shit it's not difficult. It's just hard, dirty, shitty work...but for twenty thousand dollars I'd be up there doing it.

So the painter said essentially we can avoid doing it, but the eaves are going to peel again probably in about 5 years. Maybe more, maybe less. Whatever.

The roof doesn't leak, I just did all this other shit...fuck my roof. Maybe between now and five years I'll win the lottery.

Because I'm almost at the point of asking, 'So if I blow you and all the workers, how much can you knock off there, eh?' because these prices to me are just so goddamn insane.

Also while I may look like the whitest woman on earth, why do people think I'm a racist. Because recommending a roofer to me as 'he's a caucasian too' means jack fucking shit AND it's offensive as hell. I don't care if the dude is goddamned purple...as long as he does good work, but for eleven thousand bucks the guy should be the color of friggen gold with diamond freckles.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

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buy a new house!

You would think they would come down some man with all the shit the markets are going through, I wouldnt pay that much for it right now especially when I see builder's making houses and trying to sell them and they wont move for what they spent for them...that guy should beg to give you a blow along with the work rendered

Out of curiosity Tarot, why are you having all that done at the same time? (I mean besides the semi-emergency stuff like the rotting wood)

I could see doing one bathroom, wait 5 years to pay it off, do next section of house, wait 5 years, etc etc just so it's bearable.

Problem is that its never ending in this theory, I would rather do it all at once wait 5 to 10 years then sell the house once a appreciates and or the market is better.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Patio and fence was done first. Patio leaked, but we don't often get rain in Southern CA, we thought it was resolved before we started on bathrooms.

It was cheaper to do both bathrooms with the same contractor. Of course, the price kept going up with nickel and dime shit *sigh*. But we had a tub and toilet in place before the master bath was knocked out. Neither is actually fully finished, but the main bathroom is cosmetic only, master needs a shower door (attached to granite so we need to have that done professionally, the granite is already laid in), toilet and sink/vanity. Tile floor and walls and electrical are all done.

It's been sitting there unfinished while we were trying to figure out wtf was going on with the contractor.

Meanwhile this painter was used by 2 of our neighbors, and he's almost constantly booked. So we put in months ago to use him (expecting all would be resolved on the bathroom front by now...it's not. They were supposed to be resolved before my surgery 11/07...) got an estimate and basically it was a situation of 'here's a window', so we took it.

Then he found the rot when pressure washing the stuff. The eaves alone were going to be done around the time of the bathrooms (for under $1k) but with various other things going on, I delayed having them start then that guy who did the quote isn't around ... and I'm now leery of everyone on this shit.

So the roofer came out today to look at the problem boards, and said that they couldn't patch fix some problems, new roof, etc.

So I'm having the painter fix the problem boards, which is a panacea and I'll have the roof redone later. I'm banking on it being a lot cheaper down the road, especially if we go deeper into recession.

Hope that explains it. It feels like the fucking money pit. And we've been doing various other improvements constantly along the way too, we've had the house now 10 years.

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When you do go to do it, ask your roofing company how much just to put up the plywood and shingle it. (You'd have a hard time doing it yourself on that btw. 8' sheets of plywood to haul up, and you really want to get them installed straight.)

A big chunk of the money on those sorts of bids is man hours on demolition, and disposal. You could conceivably save a bunch of money if you stripped the roof yourself(You just need to take the shingles off. You don't actually have 3 "roofs" probably. It's common practice to lay another layer of shingles over the first when they get old. Most roofers I know, though, won't do more than 2.) It takes no particular skill and eats up the most time. Rent a big dumpster, call up half a dozen of your family members, arm them with roofing shovels(they sell em at Home Depot) and a case of beer and tell em to have at it. Strip it down to the plywood and I bet the roofing company bid goes way down.

Course, part of what you pay for on that is an insured roofing company. If your brother ends up falling off the roof with an armful of shingles, I'm not entirely sure that Allstate covers it. Heh

Still, it's something to look into when you get around to that point, perhaps. When you get a roof done, you're paying for skilled labor, and a large chunk of it really isn't.

That sucks.

P.S. I hear you on the racist part. I hate being in the "white club" where every backwood redneck hillbilly thinks I am in the KKK and it's fine to call ethnic people by every bigoted word they can think up. It's offensive, and it immediately makes me not like the person.

Course, I dated a black woman, and trust me, there is no love lost on either side of the fence.

Blow me, I'll come do your work..

Sorry to hear your are getting screwed and not in the good way. It's so hard to deal with people who do work on your house.. The good ones are damn expensive and the others are usually terrible or shady..

I'm with eckert on this.. if you throw in room and board!

Money Pit.

Rent it.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Ya know, it really has nothing to do with being racist. Some people are against hiring illegals to do work and the contractor is just letting you know that he doesn't support the hiring of illegals. Frankly, neither should you.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

I'm not going to lie. Something about an educated woman like yourself saying something like that is oddly arousing.

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-Rileigh (aka Golliwog)

And that would be fine, except that white =! legal workers, especially when he's talking about the company owner and not those who work under him. The man who came out to do the estimate was either Armenian or Persian I think.

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it's != (not equal to) btw, not =!

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Ugh to me that's like fucking up your and you're ><

Anyhoo one other thing I should have mentioned is it's probably very different regionally. Since I live in Southern California, odds are high the person would not be white/caucasian, however they want to designate it, since pasty pale people are in the minority here (and have been since about 5-6 years ago). Whereas in many other places it would be a reference to illegal workers and not necessarily racist.

It just really floored me that someone would say that, and it's not the first time, but it's been happening relatively recently.

Ye olde legal workers v. illegal that has been common since forever and a huge bone of contention for businesses. As is licensed v. unlicensed.

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I'm still waiting for Tarot to take me up on the offer..

Given another problem just happened in my house today, I'm thinking about it.

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how big is that roof of yours?

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

You could blow them all for a discount, but that means they're either taking a loss they can't afford on materials, or else they have to blow their suppliers at the lumber yard -- and them dudes is dirty.

where's my bj?

Where's my new roof!?

Painting is still going on, I'm really happy with the color choices we ultimately ended up with. The painter mixes his own colors, and we changed what we were going with quite a few times (always with his input and most of the time at his suggestion). Once we decided on the main paint color we changed the trim color...um three times. Mainly because we have this rock face we had put on a few years back that was a challenge to accent. I'm thrilled with what we ended up with though.

As far as the roof goes...it doesn't leak. So whatever, it's fine for now. Maybe I'll win the lottery in the next few years.

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How the fuck old is the house if you've got 3 layers on the roof? 3 layers of shingles?

And if you've got rot happening what kind of half ass shitty roofer is going to leave that shit and put a new layer on top to get to 3 in the first place?

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Built in 1959, but dopers lived here. Dopers reroofed it. Sorta. You see people on meth don't do quite as fantabulous a job as they think they're doing. I'm just happy they didn't use peanut butter or something.



Just in some of the eaves, essentially it could be redone just on the edging, except that the previous shit wasn't really done as it should have been, which is why there's a problem in the first place. So it really needs to all be torn up and a new roof put on. Since that's more money than I want to outlay on it and the roof isn't leaking, I just had the problem pieces replaced. And it means our eaves will peel a lot faster than they would normally because they'll be exposed to water.

Plus I think if it starts leaking I have some insurance that covers that.

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ROFL

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

lol, that post made me think of this article...

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/meth_addicts_demand_government

Sarissa Candyangel

Well the real problem is rot spreads rot, so if the eave rot is collecting moisture and it's spreading into the end of the rafters you might end up having to replace them as well. If it's just now starting then that's not too bad.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

The article is one of the funniest goddamn things I've seen in awhile.

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Indeed! I know I've hit a new low in essay procrastination when I google this board to put it off even longer, but sometimes I miss you guys!