Friday, 30 May 2008

METROPOLITAN CHIMNEY & MASONRY- contractor nightmare #1

thanks to my good friend sonja, i have been pleasured with wonderful contractors. i absolutely love my carpenter and my electrician. my plumber is great too. but one of the contractors has been a nightmare.

oscar from metropolitan chimney called me this morning to threaten me. he was upset that he hadn't received a payment for $300 for hauling some trash. (which he did late and never completed -- see posts from later this weekend). i checked and the truth is the check i sent never cleared. i used the bank of america online check sending thing which has always worked, but dianna had warned me that she had a problem with it before. i am sure that is what happened.

but instead of having a normal conversation, asking me to check on the situation etc, he called and yelled at me, told me i was a dishonest person and that i was going to have some trouble from him. it was kinda scary!

it is so weird because i have paid him just over $11,000 for the work he has done for me. always on time, never a problem. at least from my end.

we had other problems too. he was supposed to repoint the bricks in the back of the house. they had to come back FIVE times because for some reason they just didn't want to do it thoroughly. it was super annoying, and really delayed things. and i don't think they did that great of a job. there is a ton of extra morter hanging out of the joints etc.

i also had spent a couple of weeks working in the basement scraping off old plaster so that we could kill the mold. i had discovered a beautiful brick wall under the wall to the east. i loved it because it had some white paint still on it and i just thought it looked really cool. so i thought i would just seal it up. i had a conversation with oscar, showed him some of the bricks that were crumbling and asked him to seal up the wall. i came back and the wall was covered in plaster. i wigged out. they had to undo it, but i think he never really got over it. the wall doesn't look as cool now.

it clearly was a miscommunication, my spanish SUCKS and we were talking in terms that i didn't know then (masonry jargon).

anyway, he yelled at me a few times the the midst of this project. i got rid of him awhile ago and found a WONDERFUL mason. he is less expensive, does fabulous work, is local, and uses normal billing methods, AND they guarantee their work. if you are looking for a mason check out P&P masonry. just as one example for how much better they are. i had to get my chimmney rebuilt, oscar couldn't do it as simply as i wanted and gave me a bid for $1500 and P&P could do exactly what i wanted done for $300.

so anyway, P&P is in Metropolitan is out.

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