Contractors

I had my gutters replaced today. What a relief to pull up in my driveway and see that there was no longer this big dent in the gutter right over my front porch where it appears that snow pulled it down into this shabby V shape. I have all of my downspouts, everything looks good, and I am happy. This whole gutter and contractor thing has not been easy for me to accomplish.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, this house I bought was a HUD foreclosure, but really in great shape for a foreclosure. But the stuff that needed to be fixed, well, it needed to be fixed badly. Most of it I arranged to get done before I moved in, or right there abouts. I had to get the locks changed, because according to my realtor, it's common HUD and/or foreclosure procedure to but a screw in each deadbolt so that the new owner will be forced to get the locks changed. It's amazing how one or two turns of a screw in a deadbolt lock can completely screw the whole inner workings up. So I got the locks replaced before I moved in. Got the carpets replaced, because they were in kind-of bad condition, but the kind-of bad condition that wasn't going to improve greatly by me shampooing them repeatedly. After I saw the stains on the padding, I felt really good about the carpet replacement decision. Nothing will reinforce spending money on new carpeting more than seeing someone else's dog piss stains on the underside of carpet and all over the padding. I had some plumbing work done, but that was pretty simple, because a friend of mine did that.

So what was left was gutters, handrails on the porch railing, getting a few pieces of siding replaced, having a hood vent installed in the kitchen, a gable fan installed and maybe some tile work in the kitchen. I called my realtor for recommendations for contractors, because I don't know any contractors and I didn't even know where to start. What I do know is that contractors should come with some kind of recommendation, because a contractor can fuck up your house in short order with little effort. I was not interested in cold calling, because that's just inviting trouble. My realtor gave me the name of this guy she knows and has referred out before, and she said that he's done a lot of work for her on foreclosures, he's a good guy, hard worker, affordable, blah blah blah. So I called him, he came out on the same day, crawled around under the house and found half of the building materials I needed, said he would work up an estimate and email it to me. Thank god I grew up in the country and know a thing or two about contracting and house repair, because I knew what he was saying about all of my repairs was legit, and I could discuss everything with some authority.

A couple of weeks go by, and I hadn't heard anything, but I was moving me in, and then I was moving the children in, and I just didn't have time. I finally called to follow up on the estimate and he emailed it that day. Wow! Looks good. I can totally go with this guy. But no contract for me to sign. So I called back and asked for a contract, and he said that he doesn't normally do contracts (uh oh), but he'll write one up for me. I thought to myself, but how can I sue you if you fuck up and I don't have a contract? A few days later the contract is emailed, and that looked pretty good, too. I printed it off, along with the estimate, and I was getting ready to sign, scan and email back to him with a starting date.

For some reason, I don't know why, I thought, maybe I should check this guy out first. Because I'm that woman who likes to check people out, and I know that what you never suspect can become reality within the blink of an eye. So I got on the computer and did my thing. All public things, mind you. I didn't need to go any farther than the sex offender registry. Oh my god. This bastard is a registered sex offender. Are you freaking kidding me? With a federal conviction for child pornography. Uhhhh, I went from completely sane to completely insane within a matter of minutes. I realized later that part of my panic attack was largely due to the four large glasses of sweet tea I had just had with lunch an hour earlier, but still, a registered sex offender? I called the realtor who had referred me to him, and told her that I didn't appreciate her referring me to a contractor who has had legal issues of that sort. Specifically of that sort. It didn't make me feel any better for her previous  clientele when she said, "Oh my god! Almost all of my clients are single women or single moms." The fine little hairs that are on the back of my neck, yeah, they stood on end when I heard that. Needless to say, I didn't use that guy. Never even bothered to acknowledge him in any way after that. I figured if he needed an explanation, I would just email him the link to his own page on the sex offender registry.

The next guy, well, I was less than impressed with him. He was another referral from my realtor, a name she tossed me in the panic of trying to make me believe that guy #1 was a total shock to her as well. This second guy, he was her back up guy. So I arranged to have him come out and look at everything. He shows up and I knew upon sight, this guy was a complete sleazebag. Long hair neatly braided down his back, bad teeth, but no tattoos. Tattoos will tell you a lot about where someone's been, I've found. I hired a guy about five years ago to clean the roof at the house The Ex has now, and that guy showed up, license and insurance paperwork all in order, good estimate, boom! You're hired. He takes off his shirt, has a wife beater on (I kind of like men in wife beaters) and some interesting tattoos. I spent a fair amount of time trying to surreptitiously check out his tattoos. He came down off the roof at some point and we were discussing where he had been cleaning, and I realized. Holy bejesus, this guy has Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on him. Finally! That mini-meta-analysis I did on prison gangs for my senior thesis has paid off! But whatever, because he cleaned the hell out of that roof and I'd hire him again in a minute.

Same kind of strangeness occurred when I was standing in line at my credit union one Saturday right after pay day, and the line was long and slow. Long and slow should only apply to sex, not lines in banks. There was this late 50-ish woman a few people in front of me, all dolled up with hair and makeup done, cute little shorts and silver sandals, like I would expect to see in Chesterfield. I bent down to pick something up at one point and saw a tattoo on the back of her calf. Hmmm, that's strange. She doesn't look like the tattoo sporting type, I remembered thinking.  I kept dropping my shit and needing to scratch my ankle, trying to check this tattoo out. Holy fuck, that's a KKK tattoo. Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, it's the 2000's. Are we still doing that? Well, I heard there were a few of them out in Amelia and I even heard about the secret handshake. I don't know if the secret handshake thing is true, but I'm totally prepared if anyone ever shakes my hand that way.

But this second contractor, he was a sleazebag. I'll go a step further and just call him a straight skeezeball, because that's exactly what he was. He spent more time looking at me than he did the repairs that needed to be done. At one point we had to go up into the attic, and I let him go first, because I didn't want my ass anywhere near his face. And then he tells me when we get up there, in order to install the gable fan, he'll need to undo the wiring for the light, and run this wiring here and do this, and so when I climb up in the attic, I won't be able to use the light switch, because he will have wired the gable fan into the switch. I'll just have to turn the bulb to turn the light on. Yeah, whatever. How dumb do I look? And the tile work over the stove, when I asked if he could replace a couple of tiles that have holes in them? He recommended I just go buy some of those little stick-on pot holder hooks and stick those over the holes because you can't just pop the tiles out. He would have to replace the entire back splash. Yeah, whatever, again. How come the child pornographer said it wouldn't take but about 15 minutes to pop those tiles out, regrout and replace?

I got the distinct impression that this second guy would have been willing to work out some kind of "deal" for the work. Uh, not happening. Ever. If I wanted to screw someone for some house repairs, I'd still be married. No thanks. I got him out of the house as quickly as possible and breathed a big sigh of relief when he drove off. That's one jackass who will never step foot on my property again. I put the call out on facebook, and a few friends came through with recommendations. I called one about the gutters, and will get with someone else for the carpentry work. I hope to get my porch railings replaced next month, because one side is completely rotted and not safe for trick-or-treaters at all. But it's all good, because this is the Southside and if I haven't gotten the railing replaced by then, I'll just duct tape that motherfucker right up.