House: Interlude 2 (the right contractor)
Mar. 29th, 2008 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurungBack in November and December, when we were interviewing contractors and then trying to decide which one to hire, my parents had lots of advice for us. Speaking from their position of having done home renovations in rural New York and also in rural Michigan, they felt qualified to tell us not only how much a renovation in metropolitan Ontario would cost ("$50,000 will be plenty!"), but also how, no matter who we hired, no matter how high their reputation or how glowing their recommendations, any contractor we hired would not finish on time ("you need to put a late penalty fee in the contract"), would not work steadily at the project ("He's not going to be there every day"), and would leave a mess behind when he was done ("You'll want to hire a maid service afterward"). They were adamant that I would have to approach our relationship with the contractor in an adversarial frame of mind, making sure, for example, not just to request that workers not smoke in our house, but to put such a requirement in the contract.
In this, as in so many other things, my parents don't know nearly as much as they think they do. Counting everything, the renovation is costing us around $80,000, and the scramble to shake loose the necessary funds (thanks to the parental fecklessness in which they promised things and then clawed them back later) continues. I'd say that on the revised finish date, Shawn was about 99% done, and most of the things not yet finished were beyond his control (eg, we were delivered the wrong toilet, and the sink did not come with all the required parts; the weather had been continuously below zero for weeks, forcing work on the deck to be put off to the very last minute; minor miscommunications about our requirements for the concrete pad leading to the deck also created a couple of extra days of work for him). Aside from the bureaucratic interregnum, Shawn or his crew or his subcontractors were there every working day. Most of Shawn's crew don't smoke, and those that do are chippers who smoke one cigarette a day, after lunch, and (by Shawn's policy) only outside. And not only have they consistently cleaned up after themselves throughout the renovation, when Shawn and his brother finally cleared out all their tools and supplies on Friday the 28th of march (only 4 days late, BTW), they left the house all-but spotless.
Before I talk about the other ways in which Shawn was one of the right people to hire (as opposed to whoever my parents hired who gave them such a negative attitude toward the whole class of contractors),
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morgan_dhu needed a chemically safe, handicapped accessible place to live. We bought the house, and then discovered that the inspector had been wrong, and we had knob and tube everywhere. To make matters worse, my parents then reneged on part of their promises to help us pay for the necessary accessibility renovations. Shawn, like all contractors, has two kinds of clients -- those who can afford what they want, and those, like us, who can just barely scrape together enough for what they need. Shawn went out of his way to cut us some special breaks and did some work for us pro bono, but he made it clear that he was doing so because of our dire situation, and that he doesn't do that for everyone. [end disclaimer]
So, let us count the ways to tell if one has hired the right contractor:
1. Shawn found the knob and tube for us that the inspector had missed -- either the inspector didn't see all the GFI outlets (a common dodge to make knob and tube act grounded without rewiring) throughout the main floor, due to the "house showing" furniture being in the way, or else he didn't know that a GFI where it doesn't need to be in an older house usually means "non-upgraded knob and tube here."
2. The previous owner of our house did not hire the right contractors, and she must have had a fight with them at one point. Evidence of this: the basement laundry room had outlets for the washer and dryer, from which ran wires to the electrical panel, but the wires were simply tucked in behind the panel; they were in no way connected, merely made to _look_ connected. Not to mention that the arrangement of appliances in the laundry room appeared to have been done by a monkey:
[the house came with a washer but no dryer; just imagine there is one there where the dryer vent comes down]. With the door to the cold room just beyond the left edge of the picture, there wasn't actually adequate room for the dryer even if you had the washer and dryer half-facing each other. And that kind of setup would never work with a front-loading efficient washer, anyway.
We knew about the non-working outlets and the monkey-inspired layout, so we included "make the laundry room work" in the list of things we needed Shawn to do. Our intent was for him to fix the outlets, and also rearrange the location of the washtub so the whole ensemble could fit the room properly.
But we also told him that eventually, we wanted the laundry moved to the huge furnace room, and then, eventually, someday, that laundry room could be turned into a full bathroom for guests, and the dinky little powder room could become storage. Someday, eventually, when we had the money. His estimate, on which basis we hired him, specified that if they had to break up the basement floor (as would be required to move the laundry), that would cost more.
Then, once we hired him and he started planning the job, he told us he really didn't like leaving the laundry where it was (because he dislikes doing things halfway) and offered to move it, breaking the floor and all, while keeping within the existing plumbing budget.
3. The kitchen and tiny foyer at the top of the stairs from the basement had serviceable linoleum when we bought it:
It wasn't very nice, but it was OK, and not being much on appearances, and on a tight shoestring budget, we accepted that it would not be changed.
Now, as previously recounted, Shawn offered to buy us a brand-new window after the previous one had suffered a few tiny chips along the frame. We explained that the window had to be aluminum, not toxic vinyl. He wasn't happy to hear that, since aluminum windows are more expensive. We offered to cover the cost difference since we had not warned him of this special requirement vis-a-vis windows in advance. When I repeated that offer to him in person, he took me into the kitchen and explained that he didn't feel good about leaving the linoleum floor in place; it was too crappy and not durable enough to suit him. Instead, he offered to tile the entire kitchen and foyer for the cost of tile plus Ditra (which, at $2 per square foot, was nearly as expensive as our tile). The labour and mortar would be free.
I guess this is an example of the "offer something extra, get something extra back" approach to dealing with your contractor -- much preferable to my parents' antagonistic approach, I think.
4. When we decided to buy the house, there were both curtains and blinds in front of the bay window, and "house showing" furniture in all the rooms. And the place had been recently painted. This was almost certainly by design, as it prevented either me or our inspector from seeing certain problems. After all the showing furniture was removed, and we took down the nasty orange, perfume-infested curtains covering the bay window, certain water problems became apparent in the area of the window:
And in the guest bedroom below (the stains were noticeable from the start; the puddle on the floor only happened after a major episode of rain and snowmelt in early February):
After looking around outside, I thought the bay window problem was caused by lack of caulking between the flashing and the brick on the outside of the window. And the water damage in the basement, I thought, was due to the water just continuing downward.
Shawn looked at the stains in the basement and decided they were due to the drainspout that was going into the ground, through old clay tile leading to the storm drains (that green pipe behind the A/C). He presumed the clay tile was deteriorated, allowing the water to saturate the ground, where it would then penetrate the wall:
He also thought the lack of a window well might be contributing to the problem. So he gave us a window well (no charge):
And added "relocate downspout to empty onto lawn" to his list of tasks. He didn't talk about the water damage around the window, although I'd told him it was there. The living room became the landing zone for a lot of stuff, since it wasn't being changed significantly. And Shawn kept the blinds closed, to prevent anyone from seeing just how many valuable tools were strewn around inside, which kept him from seeing just how big the water stains were. So it wasn't until we got to the painting stage, and I told him to please take down the blinds because we were getting better ones, that he first got a good look at the state of the water damage on the main floor (This is after a coat of paint, so the stains at the upper left must have been even worse before hand):
Shawn started investigating to find the source of the leak, which was clearly much worse and more intense than either of us thought. He found it in short order.
Sadly I don't have any photographs of the hole in our roof, because at the time I saw it my camera was in my backpack down on the ground, but you can see here that the roof has an extension to accommodate the jut-out of the bay window and porch overhang, and between the main roof and the extension is a valley. That valley was roofed, on both sides, with a long strip of green shingle, which is totally not what you want (IIRC, building code requires aluminum flashing):
On the side visible in the photo, the valley was deteriorated, but free of holes at the moment. The inspector saw that side, so "fix the roof valley" was on our list of tasks from the start, but we had thought it was a low-priority item, since there were no leaks above that side, and so (we thought) it could be put off until summer. On the other side, where the inspector forgot to look, the valley had developed a hole down at the very bottom, just above the eavestroughs, through which water was pouring down between the brick and the drywall. The worst damage was in the basement just above the trim, where the gap between brick and drywall ended, and the water just soaked into the drywall and totally eroded it.
Shawn told me his flashing subcontractor could fix the roof and put in new downspouts for us for around $800, but that would have to wait until after Easter, at which point he would haggle for the best price he could get for us. In the meantime, he fixed the deteriorated drywall in the basement bedroom:
Last week, as five days after the equinox we finally got our first dose of March weather (snow that turned into sleet coming down at a fast clip), I called Shawn:
As it turned out, his flashing subcontractor didn't want to go up on the roof and tease up the corner of each roof shingle edging the valleys, so as to slide a sheet of flashing in place, so Shawn did that himself. To both valleys, the one that was leaking and the other one. We really need to find out which massage therapists practice near his home and give the man a gift certificate.
5. One of the selling points for us of Shawn's original estimate was this passage:
However, due to our frayed shoestring of a budget, we asked him to refrain from putting back up drywall on the basement ceiling except in the guest bedroom.
So what did I behold in the basement after drywalling began, but ceilings where I didn't expect them, in the powder room, the hallway, and the former laundry room:
Our list of things to do also had a request to make sure that stray gas from the furnace room could not get up to the ground floor to make Morgan sick. This mostly based on our experience in our current apartment, where ever since the furnace has been upgraded to a condensing gas power vented model, Morgan has been getting sick from being in the study (situated above the furnace).
Shawn asked what we wanted done about this; we asked him to vapour proof the ceiling of the furnace room with aluminum backed insulation (aluminum because there's no exposed evil toxic plastic, unlike vapour barrier). For much less money than I expected to have to pay, he did a better, more thorough job of sealing off the furnace room from the main floor than I could have done (and in a tiny fraction of the time):
One final note: there's good contractors, and then there's all around good people. On that note, the other day, I learned that Shawn's monster 4-seat pickup is not just his business car, but his only car; he keeps carseats for his two young children in the back. And he makes a point of always fueling the truck with biodiesel.
In this, as in so many other things, my parents don't know nearly as much as they think they do. Counting everything, the renovation is costing us around $80,000, and the scramble to shake loose the necessary funds (thanks to the parental fecklessness in which they promised things and then clawed them back later) continues. I'd say that on the revised finish date, Shawn was about 99% done, and most of the things not yet finished were beyond his control (eg, we were delivered the wrong toilet, and the sink did not come with all the required parts; the weather had been continuously below zero for weeks, forcing work on the deck to be put off to the very last minute; minor miscommunications about our requirements for the concrete pad leading to the deck also created a couple of extra days of work for him). Aside from the bureaucratic interregnum, Shawn or his crew or his subcontractors were there every working day. Most of Shawn's crew don't smoke, and those that do are chippers who smoke one cigarette a day, after lunch, and (by Shawn's policy) only outside. And not only have they consistently cleaned up after themselves throughout the renovation, when Shawn and his brother finally cleared out all their tools and supplies on Friday the 28th of march (only 4 days late, BTW), they left the house all-but spotless.
Before I talk about the other ways in which Shawn was one of the right people to hire (as opposed to whoever my parents hired who gave them such a negative attitude toward the whole class of contractors),
A Disclaimer
If you found this page via Google and are thinking of hiring Shawn Morren to work on your house, please note:morgan_dhu needed a chemically safe, handicapped accessible place to live. We bought the house, and then discovered that the inspector had been wrong, and we had knob and tube everywhere. To make matters worse, my parents then reneged on part of their promises to help us pay for the necessary accessibility renovations. Shawn, like all contractors, has two kinds of clients -- those who can afford what they want, and those, like us, who can just barely scrape together enough for what they need. Shawn went out of his way to cut us some special breaks and did some work for us pro bono, but he made it clear that he was doing so because of our dire situation, and that he doesn't do that for everyone. [end disclaimer]So, let us count the ways to tell if one has hired the right contractor:
1. Shawn found the knob and tube for us that the inspector had missed -- either the inspector didn't see all the GFI outlets (a common dodge to make knob and tube act grounded without rewiring) throughout the main floor, due to the "house showing" furniture being in the way, or else he didn't know that a GFI where it doesn't need to be in an older house usually means "non-upgraded knob and tube here."
2. The previous owner of our house did not hire the right contractors, and she must have had a fight with them at one point. Evidence of this: the basement laundry room had outlets for the washer and dryer, from which ran wires to the electrical panel, but the wires were simply tucked in behind the panel; they were in no way connected, merely made to _look_ connected. Not to mention that the arrangement of appliances in the laundry room appeared to have been done by a monkey:
[the house came with a washer but no dryer; just imagine there is one there where the dryer vent comes down]. With the door to the cold room just beyond the left edge of the picture, there wasn't actually adequate room for the dryer even if you had the washer and dryer half-facing each other. And that kind of setup would never work with a front-loading efficient washer, anyway.
We knew about the non-working outlets and the monkey-inspired layout, so we included "make the laundry room work" in the list of things we needed Shawn to do. Our intent was for him to fix the outlets, and also rearrange the location of the washtub so the whole ensemble could fit the room properly.
But we also told him that eventually, we wanted the laundry moved to the huge furnace room, and then, eventually, someday, that laundry room could be turned into a full bathroom for guests, and the dinky little powder room could become storage. Someday, eventually, when we had the money. His estimate, on which basis we hired him, specified that if they had to break up the basement floor (as would be required to move the laundry), that would cost more.
Then, once we hired him and he started planning the job, he told us he really didn't like leaving the laundry where it was (because he dislikes doing things halfway) and offered to move it, breaking the floor and all, while keeping within the existing plumbing budget.
3. The kitchen and tiny foyer at the top of the stairs from the basement had serviceable linoleum when we bought it:
It wasn't very nice, but it was OK, and not being much on appearances, and on a tight shoestring budget, we accepted that it would not be changed.
Now, as previously recounted, Shawn offered to buy us a brand-new window after the previous one had suffered a few tiny chips along the frame. We explained that the window had to be aluminum, not toxic vinyl. He wasn't happy to hear that, since aluminum windows are more expensive. We offered to cover the cost difference since we had not warned him of this special requirement vis-a-vis windows in advance. When I repeated that offer to him in person, he took me into the kitchen and explained that he didn't feel good about leaving the linoleum floor in place; it was too crappy and not durable enough to suit him. Instead, he offered to tile the entire kitchen and foyer for the cost of tile plus Ditra (which, at $2 per square foot, was nearly as expensive as our tile). The labour and mortar would be free.
I guess this is an example of the "offer something extra, get something extra back" approach to dealing with your contractor -- much preferable to my parents' antagonistic approach, I think.
4. When we decided to buy the house, there were both curtains and blinds in front of the bay window, and "house showing" furniture in all the rooms. And the place had been recently painted. This was almost certainly by design, as it prevented either me or our inspector from seeing certain problems. After all the showing furniture was removed, and we took down the nasty orange, perfume-infested curtains covering the bay window, certain water problems became apparent in the area of the window:
And in the guest bedroom below (the stains were noticeable from the start; the puddle on the floor only happened after a major episode of rain and snowmelt in early February):
After looking around outside, I thought the bay window problem was caused by lack of caulking between the flashing and the brick on the outside of the window. And the water damage in the basement, I thought, was due to the water just continuing downward.
Shawn looked at the stains in the basement and decided they were due to the drainspout that was going into the ground, through old clay tile leading to the storm drains (that green pipe behind the A/C). He presumed the clay tile was deteriorated, allowing the water to saturate the ground, where it would then penetrate the wall:
He also thought the lack of a window well might be contributing to the problem. So he gave us a window well (no charge):
And added "relocate downspout to empty onto lawn" to his list of tasks. He didn't talk about the water damage around the window, although I'd told him it was there. The living room became the landing zone for a lot of stuff, since it wasn't being changed significantly. And Shawn kept the blinds closed, to prevent anyone from seeing just how many valuable tools were strewn around inside, which kept him from seeing just how big the water stains were. So it wasn't until we got to the painting stage, and I told him to please take down the blinds because we were getting better ones, that he first got a good look at the state of the water damage on the main floor (This is after a coat of paint, so the stains at the upper left must have been even worse before hand):
Shawn started investigating to find the source of the leak, which was clearly much worse and more intense than either of us thought. He found it in short order.
Sadly I don't have any photographs of the hole in our roof, because at the time I saw it my camera was in my backpack down on the ground, but you can see here that the roof has an extension to accommodate the jut-out of the bay window and porch overhang, and between the main roof and the extension is a valley. That valley was roofed, on both sides, with a long strip of green shingle, which is totally not what you want (IIRC, building code requires aluminum flashing):
On the side visible in the photo, the valley was deteriorated, but free of holes at the moment. The inspector saw that side, so "fix the roof valley" was on our list of tasks from the start, but we had thought it was a low-priority item, since there were no leaks above that side, and so (we thought) it could be put off until summer. On the other side, where the inspector forgot to look, the valley had developed a hole down at the very bottom, just above the eavestroughs, through which water was pouring down between the brick and the drywall. The worst damage was in the basement just above the trim, where the gap between brick and drywall ended, and the water just soaked into the drywall and totally eroded it.
Shawn told me his flashing subcontractor could fix the roof and put in new downspouts for us for around $800, but that would have to wait until after Easter, at which point he would haggle for the best price he could get for us. In the meantime, he fixed the deteriorated drywall in the basement bedroom:
Last week, as five days after the equinox we finally got our first dose of March weather (snow that turned into sleet coming down at a fast clip), I called Shawn:
Me: I just looked outside and wished I hadn't. Please tell me you put a temporary patch on the hole in our roof.
Shawn: Yes I did, just before I left your house yesterday. I was getting ready to leave and I told myself, 'you really need to do this,' so I did.
Me: Thank you!
As it turned out, his flashing subcontractor didn't want to go up on the roof and tease up the corner of each roof shingle edging the valleys, so as to slide a sheet of flashing in place, so Shawn did that himself. To both valleys, the one that was leaking and the other one. We really need to find out which massage therapists practice near his home and give the man a gift certificate.
5. One of the selling points for us of Shawn's original estimate was this passage:
The entire basement ceiling should be dropped in order to properly run wires, fix the ducting, and generally expose what we are up against.
Do it now or never.
By removing the basement ceiling a complete improvement of your homes electrical, plumbing, and ducting can be achieved.
Work conditions for all the trades will be improved dramatically. Therefore cost will be lower and overall quality of the renovation will be better. All that has to be done at the end is some drywalling-not a huge deal for my crew and I.
However, due to our frayed shoestring of a budget, we asked him to refrain from putting back up drywall on the basement ceiling except in the guest bedroom.
So what did I behold in the basement after drywalling began, but ceilings where I didn't expect them, in the powder room, the hallway, and the former laundry room:
Our list of things to do also had a request to make sure that stray gas from the furnace room could not get up to the ground floor to make Morgan sick. This mostly based on our experience in our current apartment, where ever since the furnace has been upgraded to a condensing gas power vented model, Morgan has been getting sick from being in the study (situated above the furnace).
Shawn asked what we wanted done about this; we asked him to vapour proof the ceiling of the furnace room with aluminum backed insulation (aluminum because there's no exposed evil toxic plastic, unlike vapour barrier). For much less money than I expected to have to pay, he did a better, more thorough job of sealing off the furnace room from the main floor than I could have done (and in a tiny fraction of the time):
One final note: there's good contractors, and then there's all around good people. On that note, the other day, I learned that Shawn's monster 4-seat pickup is not just his business car, but his only car; he keeps carseats for his two young children in the back. And he makes a point of always fueling the truck with biodiesel.