The Unequipped Mechanic
It's been a long rough road when it comes to floor refinishing this week. Very frustrating. It's probably better I waited to post otherwise I wouldn't have been able to contain all the cuss words.
The floor refinishers came out to finish my floor last Monday morning and the first this he says to me is, "I notice you've got some holes in your floors and some extra boards up there. Are you gonna fix that?" And I said, "No I was kinda hoping you could help me out with that." At least that's what his boss told me. Marty said he would probably fix it for like $50. Sounded like a great deal to me because that would save me hours of work.
But here he is, the morning my floors are going to be refinished, telling me "I'm not equipped to patch that" and "that's not on my work order." This wouldn't be that big of a deal except for the fact this was the 5th company I'd gotten a quote from, the company I wanted to go with originally was totally booked through the month, and the last guy I tried to get just stopped returning my phone calls. I've got to move in. Vicki's feeling the stress so I'm feeling it double. "I'm not equipped" wasn't what I wanted to hear that morning.
I'm pretty sure that's not what he really meant. I'm sure he knew how to do it. If he needed to, he could have probably gotten the tools to do it if he hadn't brought them. In retrospect I wished I'd have asked him "What do you need? I got plenty of tools here." My suspicion is that he didn't think he was going to be paid for it. Like I was expecting him to do on the side for free. I didn't think of this till later of course. I wish I would asked him how much he wanted or whipped out some cash. But really I wish his boss had either put the repair on that work order like it should have been, or have told me that I needed to slip him some dough to begin with.
Either way, he left and said he couldn't come back out till Saturday. So last week I concentrated on patching my floors. It took about three night of work and was really loud. So loud, one of my neighbors dropped and anonymous note in my door about the noise. (More on the fun of wood floor repair later.) I worked on it till 1:00 in the morning on Friday. The last hour of which was spent moving everything upstairs back downstairs again and cleaning up for them to come work the next day.
Saturday morning I go to meet them bright and early 8:30 AM. I get a call 20 minutes after they're supposed to be there from the guy who's going to refinish my floor telling me they won't be there till Monday. I'm like "What do you mean Monday? You were supposed to be here today, twenty minutes ago." He says, "Oh.. Marty didn't call you already?" Nope. Marty did not call me. So then I ask, "Why are you calling me if Marty was supposed to have already called me?" To which he replied, "Hey, I'm just the mechanic." I'm still trying to figure out what that one means.
When I called Marty, he tries to explain that the floors aren't dry yet at the previous job so they can't come out to my place yet. Really I don't care all that much that they're coming Monday, I just want to know when they're ACTUALLY going to come. Not just tell me what I want to hear and lead me on.
"I talked to you Thursday to confirm you were coming Saturday. Why didn't you tell me yesterday? Didn't you know the floors weren't dry Friday?" All he could tell me was the floors weren't dry Friday and then they weren't dry the next morning. "What can I do?", he said. To which I replied, "Yeah. What can I do?" Because I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. They might be pissing me off, but Monday is still sooner than two weeks from now.
So instead I spent the weekend working on the baseboards. I worked about 12 hours yesterday on them and then had to go through the whole routine of moving everything downstairs and out or their way again.
This morning finally, they showed up and did the whole thing in one day. That's it. Apparently my floors with really rough and he had to go over them like 5 times, but they're looking amazing now. Two coats of polyurethane (one quick drying and one regular) and that's it. And for all the grief, I have to admit that it's really really exciting to finally have it done. It's awesome. I'm totally psyched. I would have taken some pictures today, but the floors weren't dry yet. I promise I'll post some pictures tomorrow so no one will have to wait in suspense too much.