Disaster in Columbus: Let the bodies hit the floor

Jack said:
I have no idea what his 'contractual' status is with the General Contractor. (Does he get paid for Work performed? ... Or is he expected to eat the occasional loss?)
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I suspect they don’t have a formal contract

Again you show your ignorance.

Continue on
 
countryboy said:
And watch your clientele dry up.
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Amen. You have to be firm without being a dick and every person is different so you have to tread lightly and give the customer the benefit of the doubt. It's not as simple as it all sounds. And it takes a few years to realize that unless you're a gifted psychic.
 
Jack said:
hahahaha ... I'm sure there is some kind of 'Agreement', even if it's only verbal.
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Texts and emails serve nicely but I realize they would likely not be legally binding. But having contracts didn't matter the only time I ever filed a lien, so I got the message from the government that it didn't matter. I'm at the mercy of the customer and that's just the way it is. LOL Challenge accepted
 
tinfoil said:
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.
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Anyone who doesn't want to see the grain, in a wood floor, is a fucking idiot.
 
tinfoil said:
Texts and emails serve nicely but I realize they would likely not be legally binding. But having contracts didn't matter the only time I ever filed a lien, so I got the message from the government that it didn't matter. I'm at the mercy of the customer and that's just the way it is. LOL Challenge accepted
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You're in a difficult position because your work is already done and serviceable once you demand payment. For my work, when red flags go up, my finished product (an engineering drawing or report) goes out with the invoice but without a seal. Try taking that to the County for a permit and they will be refused. The only time that doesn't work is if they decide not to do the work. If the flags are signally that then I get payment up front or no go.

Also in my contract I have written in that they are required to pay reasonable attorneys and filing fees. That is enforceable in NC and I have used it in the past successfully. Other times when a lien has not worked (twice now), the attorney I hired fucked up and missed a filing deadline.

For jobs where real estate is being transferred and its a new client I demand pre-payment.

I currently have a red flag job I'm doing now. I've worked for the client in the past renovating an old downtown building into a restaurant. It had a small mezzanine in the rear that the architect put an office on with the kitchen below. The lumber was 100 years old, cut up and spliced onto due to changes in the past, a real mess. Add in the Code requirement for "office" which is 150 psf compared to the 30 or so that the structure was designed for, and I quickly came to the realization that the design and analysis would take more effort that replacing the whole mess with a couple thousand dollars worth of clean, straight, light gauge steel members. Plus it was fireproof. The client got pissed that I made that change without asking him (he was out of the country and unavailable during the quick deadline). When I told him, seriously, that the ancient lumber was worth more on the ground (to sell for an aesthetic project) than as a structure he thought that I was insulting him. The guy is from Iraq and doesn't understand a lot about American proclivities. He did pay me. But his brother-in-law stiffed me for about $1200, and he had been a client of mine for over ten years.
 
tinfoil said:
Texts and emails serve nicely but I realize they would likely not be legally binding. But having contracts didn't matter the only time I ever filed a lien, so I got the message from the government that it didn't matter. I'm at the mercy of the customer and that's just the way it is. LOL Challenge accepted
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Well ... you know what they always say: "If you can't Dazzle them with Brilliance, you have to Baffle them with Bullshit".
 
tinfoil said:
No, it's a reminder to myself to trust my instincts to be an asshole and demand answers for questions
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That's my work world. If I ask a customer a question and they don't answer...then nothing happens till they answer my question but I work in regulatory compliance so since no one wants get sued or go to jail they don't get to mad that work comes to a stop until they comply.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
That's my work world. If I ask a customer a question and they don't answer...then nothing happens till they answer my question but I work in regulatory compliance so since no one wants get sued or go to jail they don't get to mad that work comes to a stop until they comply.
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My problem is if I make a big stink then I turn everyone against me and then they look for flaws to satsify their anger. LOL I gotta play big dumb puppy and roll with whatever the customer wants. I know this is the situation, so it doesn't bother me anymore, but it used to bother me a lot. LOL
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
My entire roof, under the shingles, is true 1x6 tongue and groove.

If I ever have to redo my roof, I plan on saving all of the tongue and groove and eventually using it for flooring or on the ceiling.
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I once removed barn siding from a fallen barn that was built in the early 1800s up in the catskills in NY state. The boards were amazing. Hemlock that was so weathered it looked like a wire brush had removed all the grain . I used the planks as flooring in my house (a renovated chicken shack from 1700s) and every board was the length of the room. The widest board was 22 inches. Most of the boards were 15 inches wide. When I sanded and coated them the patina was so rich it looked like a purplish orange color. The knots and dark spots took on a burgundy tone. It was so cool. I even sold some of the boards to a chick for her condo. She loved it. I sold it for $10/sqft installed and finished, so not a bad price for the uniqueness of the product. I've installed a few dozen floors with reclaimed wood made from salvaged beams, but that stuff doesn't compare to how awesome that barn board looked. The sad part was I removed it and installed regular hardwood when I sold the dump. It takes a love of wood to enjoy distressed floors
 
tinfoil said:
I once removed barn siding from a fallen barn that was built in the early 1800s up in the catskills in NY state. The boards were amazing. Hemlock that was so weathered it looked like a wire brush had removed all the grain . I used the planks as flooring in my house (a renovated chicken shack from 1700s) and every board was the length of the room. The widest board was 22 inches. Most of the boards were 15 inches wide. When I sanded and coated them the patina was so rich it looked like a purplish orange color. The knots and dark spots took on a burgundy tone. It was so cool. I even sold some of the boards to a chick for her condo. She loved it. I sold it for $10/sqft installed and finished, so not a bad price for the uniqueness of the product. I've installed a few dozen floors with reclaimed wood made from salvaged beams, but that stuff doesn't compare to how awesome that barn board looked. The sad part was I removed it and installed regular hardwood when I sold the dump. It takes a love of wood to enjoy distressed floors
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Real wood is much better then this fake shit they pedal.

I don't care if it's for floors, ceilings, walls, cabinets, etc.

I'm not sure if I like working with wood or leather best.
 
Jack said:
That doesn't look like oak. And it doesn't look like 'older' flooring.
Is that solid wood? Or is that some kind of newer 'engineered' wood flooring?
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LOL what? It's brand new white oak 2 1/4 strip flooring that was sanded and finished with jacobean stain (Duraseal) and the new sections I resanded and stained with different techniques. I first raised the grain of the wood using water to enhance the stain penetration. I did the same color and one color darker, Ebony, which is black and not brown. Jacobean is the darkest brown stain. The darkest sections are done by painting the stain on. It's highly unreliable and I avoid it if at all possible. I always like to wipe the excess stain from the wood so the polyurethane will adhere properly. The lighter sections are with the stain applied properly and according to the manufacturers recommendations.

32 years doing this
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
Real wood is much better then this fake shit they pedal.

I don't care if it's for floors, ceilings, walls, cabinets, etc.

I'm not sure if I like working with wood or leather best.
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I have a love for wood. I'm so lucky I fell into the trades. It's satisfying to make things look beautiful.
 
tinfoil said:
LOL what? It's brand new white oak 2 1/4 strip flooring that was sanded and finished with jacobean stain (Duraseal) and the new sections I resanded and stained with different techniques. I first raised the grain of the wood using water to enhance the stain penetration. I did the same color and one color darker, Ebony, which is black and not brown. Jacobean is the darkest brown stain. The darkest sections are done by painting the stain on. It's highly unreliable and I avoid it if at all possible. I always like to wipe the excess stain from the wood so the polyurethane will adhere properly. The lighter sections are with the stain applied properly and according to the manufacturers recommendations.

32 years doing this
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I only ask because the grain is wild and the pieces look short. You mentioned it before when you talked about the lengths of the old wood off the Barn.
If you hold up 12' or 16' oak flooring as the standard, that wild grain looks like shit. I can see the Owner wanting to subdue that.
(In your opinion of 32 years, would YOU want that in YOUR House?)
 
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This is the view from the front door after I finished staining. The entire hallway was new wood repaired into the existing floor which is from the stairs over to the right of the image. Perfect blending ofnew and old wood. Very hard to achieve. I'm heartbroken that this has to get resanded. LOL oh well, I got paid. and I get paid to make even more perfect. LOL
 
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