Observations

I really need to know if it's just me or not, but whenever you have someone in doing work on your house do they clean up, or leave a mess? And.. as they get towards the end of the job does the quality of their work kind of drop off?

Every person that has worked on our house in the last year has started off great, but by the time they leave I'm seriously doubting their work.  The latest example of this was the guys who just painted our house.  I know last week I was raving about them, but they totally had me fooled.  For the first week they were here they did excellent work, very neat, caulked very thoroughly, excellent prep etc.  At some point it was decided they were going to be done let's say on a Wednesday.  On Wednesday they were done, but they weren't "done" if you know what I mean.  They didn't prep the porch floor well and only put on one coat of paint (on the porch floor), since they left I discovered they missed putting the finish coat on a door and on some windows.  They also forgot to scrape and clean some of the windows.  I'm pretty disappointed. Also they left a huge mess, they didn't lay down tarps before they scraped and power washed the house (can you say LEAD PAINT people!!!!).  It nearly killed me when I saw that, but they said they would rake up as much as they could and then I planned on bringing in some new topsoil, plants and mulch.  Did they do that?  NO! We're going to call and fill them in on all the issues but please, why do a great job in the beginning and then ruin your reputation by letting things slide at the end?

This really is just the tip of the iceberg, before the painters we had drywallers that called ten minutes before they were going to get started leaving me no time to prep and get ready for what I knew was going to be a huge mess. I only agreed because I was desperate to get the work done and we would have had to wait a month if I said no. Let's just say that the highlight of the clean up was when I ended up having to wipe down over 300 individual books by hand. JOY! Or the attic insulators that left huge piles of yucky insulation in the muddy puddles in front of our house.  Or the granite installers who didn't warn me that they were going to have to cut holes for the sink in our new granite countertop while in the kitchen.  That was great, they filled our whole house with sooty black dust that I was cleaning up for months.

So, has anyone else have this problem? If so how do you handle it?

Comments

[Leslie]

Oh, I hear you. I would be giving glowing recommendations to the guy who put in our sump pump if he hadn't really slacked on the very last bit of cleanup work he needed to do.

[Bubba]

Oh, I hear you too. Sheetrock dust sucks, sawdust is bad, but the thing I hate the most is the insidious dust that rises from thin-set and grout when tile is being installed. Especially, when the guy installing the tile mixes the cement in the bedroom!!!, rather than walking 15 feet to the front porch. Errrggh. As for what to do about it, I have no idea. Maybe I'm a wuss but my feeling is that if I've finally found someone to do good work for a reasonable price, I'd rather clean myself than risk irritating him by complaining about the mess. Especially since: (1) I frequently need to leave workmen alone in the house while I go to work so finding someone who I can trust is VERY difficult; (2) they're not going to do a good job cleaning up so I'm going to have to clean anyway; and (3) I live in New Orleans, where goodworkman are currently in high demand and short supply. I do reccomend "Sheetrock and Shellac," if you haven't read it yet, which is an excellent memoir/essay type book about the agonies of home renovation AND has great descriptions of the methods that the author employs to protect his home from messy workmen.

[Teresa Ives]

I hear you too. But I think it makes a difference how you pay them. If full payment is contingent on a walkthrough and inspection, I can usually count on the clean-up being done.