My experience 😑

High cost work with little to no accountability.

You can count on them doubling the estimate every single time, and you have to keep on them just to make sure the work gets done.

Just had one set of subcontractors throw away material for other fixes… Lead group days that the ones involved are no longer a part of the project, so we’re on the hook for even more.

Thinking back, i have always been unhappy with the work done by a contractor. I’m not asking for much, painters paint an area, plumbers stop leaks, drywall dudes fix the water damage… And the job is always left with areas unpainted, pipes not connected, and holes in the drywall that were not there before.

Have you ever been happy with a contractors work? What did they do for you?

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    9·
    8 hours ago

    Following my wife’s leg amputation in February, we had to have a BUNCH of work done before the hospital would let me bring her home.

    Bonus, I had to arrange for ALL of this between getting a cancer diagnosis and having surgery.

    1. Wheelchair ramp. Approved the bid on a Friday, ramp was installed the next Monday. All told, stellar work. Post install, needed one modification to keep from being fenced out of part of the property, they took care of that too.

    Problem was their BILLING department. I paid 1/2 up front to get the job started, 1/2 on completion, but they failed to track the deposit and kept insisting I owed $5,900 that I did not. I kept the receipts and showed them, no, paid in full.

    1. Bathroom. This was actually TWO contractors. #1 pulled the bathtub and converted it to a walk in shower. #2 widened the bathroom door for wheelchair access, shortened a wall that was blocking access, pulled the double sink and vanity to install a smaller single sink, and all that required pulling and replacing the floor.

    Everything went as expected. The only problem was they said not to use the shower for 24 hours and when I went to use it, they had forgotten to turn the water back on. 😔 They did come back and fix it the next morning.

    1. They wanted to saddle us with this 300 lb. behemoth wheelchair that we had no way of transporting. They said we couldn’t use my existing wheelchair because it needed a “limb support” for the amputation and there was no way to mount it on my chair.

    So step 1: Obtain limb support. Nobody locally had one. Special order only. So I bought one online for $500.

    THEN I had to figure out how to attach it. Under the seat on mine there was an aluminum strut in exactly the right spot, so it was a matter of finding a local metal shop, having them weld an aluminum tube onto that strut, inserting the support into the tube and bolting it into place.

    The guys at the metal shop were amazing, figured out the process, proof of concept worked for the hospital and my wife now has her own modified chair in purple and gold. LOL.

    Both tubes have now been painted to match their respective chairs.

    • TheOSINTguy@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      19 hours ago

      I’m assuming the hospital didn’t let her out for accessibility reasons, other then showing them the wheel chair, did they ask for pictures or videos of the accessibility modifications or did they come to your house and inspect it?

      Also fuck cancer. Must have been tough having to do all of this and getting that diagnosis.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
        4·
        15 hours ago

        Photos and seeing the chair in person were enough. There were no actual inspections until we got her home.

        And yeah, dealing with all that + cancer sucked. At one point we were both actually in the same hospital at the same time. I went in for my surgery on 2/19 and was in until 2/23. She was in 1/26 to 3/5.