So a bit of the story with this painter.  We hired him to strip and then paint a few sections of the house including:

• The soffit and frieze board on the driveway side of the house
• The soffit and posts on the porch, all the way around (top part of the posts since we are re-doing the lower sections)
• The siding next to the side door
• The shingled section in the peak on the driveway side (he didnt have to strip this section, just sand/prep for paint and then paint.

The quote is not tiny, mostly it’s for the stripping which is understandable and it was very clear that everything was covered except for the shingle section since that wasn’t getting stripped he didn’t write that part out explicitly like the rest.

Well they stop by the first day of the job and I talk to the owner (who did the quote) and turns out he didn’t realize we needed the whole soffit of the porch done, he thought it was just the posts and the board the posts touch (or something like that) so he wanted to get back to me with a new quote.  At the time i didn’t have the quote in front of me so I didn’t argue but was concerned about how much more this would cost.

So I get the new quote and the wording ‘soffit and frieze board around the porch’ is the exact same wording as the original quote so we mention this to him and he admits he just screwed up.  He asks if we’ll work with him, it would be cheaper for him to have his guys remove most of the wood instead of stripping it and put up new wood.  Fine, as long as they can make it look very close to the original, that is fine with us.

So they get to work, they have 1 guy stripping the posts (and man is he slow) and another guy starts taking apart and rebuilding the soffit around the porch.  Well it became clear pretty quickly that a) the stripping is going to take forever, the guy only showed up sometimes and he was ridiculously slow at stripping (he had the wrong type of scrapers mainly and he kept dinging up the wood).  I mean it’s nothing compared to the work I did stripping the soffit outside our gym.  ho hum.

Then it became clear that the carpenter he hired is not a finish carpenter, he can’t do moldings well, not only does he waste tons of material cutting things wrong, he leaves corners with gaps and broken tips and he puts up the moldings in small sections because that’s all he can manage by himself.  One corner in particular was really bad so we complain about that and the owner decides to get another carpenter he hires sometimes to come fix it.  Meanwhile the first guy is still working on other sections.

In the mean time, they started this job in August (13th), they worked that first week then showed up sporadically the second week then stopped coming until this past week, right when Ryan was off and needed to do siding on that side of the house (we had anticipated that the main work would at least be done and they at the worst would be painting at this point – nope).

So Ryan and the guys are stepping on each others’ toes and Ryan is catching them doing all manner of stupid things and ends up helping them (when he needed his time to do siding etc.).  Finally the owner basically fires the first carpenter and wants the second carpenter (who admits freely that he is not a finish carpenter and it took him so long to do that one corner of molding he doesn’t feel comfortable doing the larger molding by himself).  He however knows a real finish carpenter and we decide to just hire this other guy to put the molding up and the painter’s carpenter can help him (the painter is paying him to put up the molding so that works out).  So we will be out an extra thousand probably when this is all done but the large molding is coming out SO much better and we are finally happy with the work.

The stripping is still taking forever!  The same kid (whom we found out was hired at the time of this job starting so this is his first time doing any type of construction and no one is overseeing him!), is still working on stripping the porch.  They replaced almost everything but he’s got to strip the moldings at the top of the posts and the moldings in the front of the house/triangle/peak.  The soffit along the driveway hasnt been touched yet and has a large section to strip as well.  No idea when this project will get done.

Today however Ryan got a few more pieces of siding up and the window installed!  He’ll be continuing siding this weekend and next week before he goes back to work on wednesday.

And now some pictures, we walked around the house today after everyone left.

The last window is in on this side!

The peak, they had to replace some rotted wood and the first carpenter put in the small molding. Ryan agreed to put in these small blocks to save the carpenter from having to do these outside angles on the molding which saved probably a day of labor.

The large molding is done – all around the porch, they just have to do the one at the second/third story of the house next week.

They even did the peak because there was no way to meet up the new trim with the old. Notice only 1/2 of the peak is stripped, the kid started this in the morning and must have got bored because he then swapped to doing other parts instead of just finishing it for some reason. This whole triangle I could do in an hour easily, took him 3 to do half of it.

The painters showed up one day this week and started priming the molding that was up, Ryan mentioned to them that the stripping still had to be done and would mess up their paint so they stopped. I hope painters are coming next week now that it’s almost ready for them!

The back corner. We are so happy with this now, thank goodness something is finally working out.

So this will cost us but it was worth it to find a local finish carpenter that does good work on historical houses and he’s not slow about it either.  He also brought his dog (he brings here everywhere) and she hung out in the back yard and even met Fitz for a bit 🙂

Maia and Fitz