As the drywall turns....

As the drywall turns....

December 9th --  Who knew that this would turn into a drama called "As the Drywall Turns..."  The owner of the painting company sent me an e-mail to tell me he would arrive at 8 am on Monday -- have I said how much I love the painter?  I love him even more when he e-mailed at 7:00 am this morning to let me know that he would be a little bit late because he needed to pick up a few tools first.

When the painters arrived I blurted out, "Painters to the Rescue" (all the credit goes to Kristine for that line).  One of the painters worked for five years hanging drywall with his father and they were bringing in a fourth guy with vast drywall experience.  That was the good news...and then the not-so-good news as they started looking around at the really crappy job the previous drywall crew had done. There were large gaps between sections of drywall and the previous crew had used lots of pieces of drywall instead of larger pieces, which meant that there would be more taping and mudding and sanding and horrible, horrible dust.

On the one hand I was very impressed by the critical stance my painters were taking by looking at the drywall and identifying what was wrong and what would need to be fixed.  On the other hand, it was pretty depressing to think how bad the previous crew was and how shoddy their work was.

By the time I had left the house -- mid-morning -- I have not yet heard from my contractor, who had returned from a week's vacation.  But, I left feeling that at least the painters would know what to do to fix everything.  In the meantime, the painters told me that they had learned that the finish carpenter was rescheduled from this Thursday to next Monday.  So basically, my four painters had one week to correct the mistakes, tape, mud, sand, and finish the drywall.  

By early afternoon, I received an e-mail from my contractor who tried to explain that his only weapon at this point was his phone and while he had not yet reached the owner of the drywall company, he had talked to the supervisor who claimed that last week he had sent two different finish crews to my house and they either didn't show or didn't want to do the job.  My contractor explained that this is common in the industry as crews will take a higher-paying or easier job over another one.  There is no doubt that my house is a "big job."  The contractor assured me that the drywall company would cover all the costs, and that he would speak with me by phone soon.  Of course, it wasn't clear to me if the contractor had actually talked to the painters who were very, very dissatisfied and critical of the state of the drywall.  There is one thing to "cover the costs" of finishing the drywall and another thing to cover the costs of having to redo the current drywall and then finish it.

I will speak by phone with the contractor tomorrow and make clear that I will refuse to pay any increased costs to get the drywall correct.

It was a pleasure to arrive home this evening and to see the progress that my painters/drywall guys made.

Before Painters to the rescue:

After Painters to the rescue:

Basically, you get the idea.....

Here are a few photos of just what nice work these guys are doing, and I didn't even take photos of how they swept up their debris, how they put down drop clothes, and how organized they left their work space.

Yes, Painters to the Rescue indeed!!!