Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! The events I'm about to explain are true and verifiable by photos on my phone and the metadata.
I have a contract in the Bexley area of Columbus. I am contracting with a re-modelling contractor so I have not met the clients in person and they are in FL for the winter. The home is very old and poorly constructed with lots of loose floor boards and undulating floors. Repairs were made and resanding took place after new areas were installed.
Sanding began and immediately I stained some spots for samples and tired to elicit an affirmative answer for the choice. It was not possible to match the condition of the old floors with any known products. The floors were sanded some 30+ years ago by the looks of the intense chatter marks (caused by drum paper instead of belt sanders). The stain was most likely Jacobean that was painted on as dark as possible. (Gee, I wonder why it peeled off everywhere?) The stain color was like a dark brown with a yellow tint on top. There's no stain to match 30 years of aging. I prepared the floors, some 1600 sqft and and set of stairs with open ends and ballisters. An entire day's worth of hand scraping to prepare the nosings alone. I crushed it! Stained the place in 4 hours by myself (and half a cartridge of lemon berry). The contractor had sent the client photos of the sample. It had been 5 days since they had seen the color. All of a sudden the client decides they don't want to see any grain of the wood. WTF? We could have just painted the fucking thing. Some people are assholes. The contractor is bummed because his customers made him look bad. He wants to pay me for the work, but I don't want to punish him for their fickleness. He's a good customer and I even hired him to put new windows in my house, so I don't want to alienate him. I performed 95% of the work involved in the contract. The final coats are trivial compared to sanding and staining. It sucks, but I'll have to work a miracle with stain and poly to darken this floor or resand it again and paint the stain on like it's of no consequence whether the polyurethane adheres to the wood or a layer of stain. It'll peel off inside of 5 years if the house gets wild humidity swings. So, fuck! I get paid and now there's a rift between a good customer, or I bend over and help him not feel the pain? For context, he gives me about 15K in work a year. The contract for sanding was like 5500. It's a no brainer. I'm gonna end up resanding and I'm gonna cut the contractor a deal so his project isn't unprofitable. I did everything right except be a dick about the color choice. I should have demanded the client input before staining, but I got 4 weeks of work lined up and I needed to get the stain on to seal in a weeks worth of work before some lunkhead drags a tool box across my beautiful work. FUCK! I knew it when I was staining it. I fucking knew it. The whole 4 hours I was thinking the client was gonna pull a douche move. Sure enough. The fucking asshole doesn't want to see the grain of the wood. LOL just makes me weep. I work very hard to ensure the inherent beauty of the wood shows up. I could have spent half the time sanding if I was going to hide the grain by painting stain on.
I have a contract in the Bexley area of Columbus. I am contracting with a re-modelling contractor so I have not met the clients in person and they are in FL for the winter. The home is very old and poorly constructed with lots of loose floor boards and undulating floors. Repairs were made and resanding took place after new areas were installed.
Sanding began and immediately I stained some spots for samples and tired to elicit an affirmative answer for the choice. It was not possible to match the condition of the old floors with any known products. The floors were sanded some 30+ years ago by the looks of the intense chatter marks (caused by drum paper instead of belt sanders). The stain was most likely Jacobean that was painted on as dark as possible. (Gee, I wonder why it peeled off everywhere?) The stain color was like a dark brown with a yellow tint on top. There's no stain to match 30 years of aging. I prepared the floors, some 1600 sqft and and set of stairs with open ends and ballisters. An entire day's worth of hand scraping to prepare the nosings alone. I crushed it! Stained the place in 4 hours by myself (and half a cartridge of lemon berry). The contractor had sent the client photos of the sample. It had been 5 days since they had seen the color. All of a sudden the client decides they don't want to see any grain of the wood. WTF? We could have just painted the fucking thing. Some people are assholes. The contractor is bummed because his customers made him look bad. He wants to pay me for the work, but I don't want to punish him for their fickleness. He's a good customer and I even hired him to put new windows in my house, so I don't want to alienate him. I performed 95% of the work involved in the contract. The final coats are trivial compared to sanding and staining. It sucks, but I'll have to work a miracle with stain and poly to darken this floor or resand it again and paint the stain on like it's of no consequence whether the polyurethane adheres to the wood or a layer of stain. It'll peel off inside of 5 years if the house gets wild humidity swings. So, fuck! I get paid and now there's a rift between a good customer, or I bend over and help him not feel the pain? For context, he gives me about 15K in work a year. The contract for sanding was like 5500. It's a no brainer. I'm gonna end up resanding and I'm gonna cut the contractor a deal so his project isn't unprofitable. I did everything right except be a dick about the color choice. I should have demanded the client input before staining, but I got 4 weeks of work lined up and I needed to get the stain on to seal in a weeks worth of work before some lunkhead drags a tool box across my beautiful work. FUCK! I knew it when I was staining it. I fucking knew it. The whole 4 hours I was thinking the client was gonna pull a douche move. Sure enough. The fucking asshole doesn't want to see the grain of the wood. LOL just makes me weep. I work very hard to ensure the inherent beauty of the wood shows up. I could have spent half the time sanding if I was going to hide the grain by painting stain on.
