Time for a New Kitchen no 8

Time for a New Kitchen no 8

As the weekend approaches I am feeling more 'utterly depressed and despondent', than stressed. I suppose I have developed some sort of grudging respect for the guy I employed, that's because he was so good about the mistakes that had been made in the tiling. He told the tiler to take out the tiles that were wrong and re-do it as I had originally requested, all at no extra cost to me. The tiler tried to argue with him, just as he had argued with me and tried to fob me off with excuses as to why his way was better, but I have to admit, the chap I employed was having none of it and insisted it all be re-done exactly as I wanted.  That renewed my faith a little, unfortunately it didn’t prevent the tiler doing exactly the same thing again on the other wall. This time I stood up to him and insisted he re-do it, which he did but only after telling me, yet again, why it looked better his way.

The kitchen is almost at the point where you can see what it is going to look like. My nice new shiny white doors are still covered in protectice blue plastic. The tiles are almost up on the back wall, the double sink unit is in and working, the washing machine is plumbed in and in the picture you can see the dishwasher waiting to go in next. On the left side of the picture you can see my black and white cooker with a shiny black ceramic top that is going next to the washing machine. That one wall will look rather nice.

 Now I can get some idea of how nice the back wall of my kitchen is going to look it makes me realise how shabby my other units are going to look no matter how well I paint them but there is no point thinking that cos no way can I afford to replace all the units. No …………they will be painted as planned, have new tiles above them and a new work surface on top. It will look a lot better than it does now so guess I should be happy.

But of course……………..not all is as well with this work as it should be. This morning I had a chance to inspect the work on my own in the full glare of the morning sun.
OH NO !!!!!!  My nice new black work surface is very badly damaged; it has terrible deep scratches covering an area of about 8sq inches (10sq cm). The tiler who arrived has just told me I can use a childs wax crayon to cover the scratches  !!!!.  AND………..then I noticed the ceramic top to my cooker (that I had left covered in a thick towel) is also very, very badly damaged. It is covered in very deep scores, it almost looks as if this guy has cut his tiles on top of my ceramic hob. I could never prove it of course but that is what it looks like . Ceramic top cookers do no come cheap as I am sure you know. The tillers response was along the lines of oh well it can’t be helped I suppose. Remember this is the guy who thinks kitchens should be completely stripped out to have any work done in them. Last night there was a bit of a rush to get the sink plumbed in and working which resulted in an old reused piece of plastic pipe being split. Of course it wasn’t replaced, for a start he doesn’t seem to carry any of the stuff he might need, and secondly……….well he has some tape which he says fixes every thing!!! Let’s hope it does. That is something else I have noticed about him, he doesn’t seem to plan ahead, every so often he says he just has to pop out for something, sometimes he has done this a couple of times per night,……….all at my expense no doubt. The final nightmare is the bill…………….I still don’t know how much they are going to charge for this nightmare.


I am trying very hard to be philosophical about this and treat it as an expensive (very) learning curve. In future I think I will have a check list before letting any one start work, it should go something like this

•      The one thing I have learnt is that if I EVER have to employ any one again it will be someone I do not know which will make it a lot easier to complain when things go wrong.
• I will always insist on an estimate for the job NOT an hourly rate. 
• At the first sign of something not being quite right I will say so. 
• The one thing I should have done with this guy right at the start,  was to tell him that he needed to make my house a priority and not try to fit in my work in the evenings, in the dark, without any one to help with the heavy bits. 
• He should have made sure he had every thing he needed to the job, including dust covers for my other kitchen appliances and the floors, pens pencils, note pads, buckets, brooms, brushes, measuring tapes, and all the other things he has ‘borrowed’. Pencils get lost and brooms brushes etc end coated in plaster and unfit to use indoors
  

     From now on business will be business…… what a shame cos I would rather be friends with people but now I see that is not always a good idea. In this particular case it’s even more difficult cos the guy I employed seems quite a nice friendly chap. He is really a rather nice person, he is pleasant, honest and works hard to support his young family. He has taken on far more than he can cope with but all with the very best of intentions and all in order to support his family without hand outs from the state.


     OH BIG SIGH……Isn’t life difficult sometimes?? And I still feel sick with anxiety about it all.