The Floor Saga Continues

So now we come once again to flooring.

My parquet floors in August had to be replaced because of a dishwasher malfunction.

In early October, men came and put in tile.

It was a horrible, awful job, although initially we thought it was ok. You can't really tell until it's done, after all, because you can't walk on it and stuff is wet and you think it going to dry a different color.

However, after they were through we realized that the grout changed color halfway through, the tiles are not lined up straight, and they are not flat. You can trip over this floor without even thinking about it.

After much back and forth with the flooring company, they have agreed to replace the tile floor. This entails jackhammers and sledge hammers and other equipment that I don't even want to think about being in my home.

I am leaving as soon as they arrive, and leaving this part to my husband to supervise.

As it is, we've had to remove everything not just in the kitchen but also in the living room, because of the anticipated dust that we have been told this will create. That is also another reason for me to leave, as I have asthma.

Here is what my house looks like now:

We need some help with the cabinets; the tile men will have to help us move some things.

Yep, my refrigerator is in my living room.

This has been very stressful. The tile does not look bad to just look at it, but it is wavy and a nightmare to walk on. My husband was determined it was going to be made right, and so hopefully it shall be.

The new tile installer is a "certified tile installer," which is supposed to mean something. Anyway, the flooring people took this fellow's word that the job was poor. They initially brought him out to prove it was "acceptably poor" but he said it wasn't and it all needed to come up. That was when they finally agreed to pay to replace it.

I will be out all day and I'm not really well enough to be out for long periods. Fortunately I will be able to meet a friend for lunch, so that will be a nice long break.

Wish me luck, with all of it.

The Unfinished Work

I don't like to write posts like this. I don't like to be critical of companies or their workers. I do expect, though, for people to work and do their job when I am paying for products and labor.

I don't expect them to show up at 11 a.m. and then work for an hour and take a 2-hour lunch. I expect at least a 6-hour work day out of them. I realize putting down tile is not easy but if you only work 3 hours a day, it sure takes a long time.

To remind you, we had an incident with the dishwasher which resulted in the loss of my 30-year-old parquet flooring. We choose to replace it with tile.

We chose our flooring company, a place in Roanoke that I politely will not name - yet. While we were at it, we decided to replace the carpeting in the living room, hallway, and bedroom with hardwood flooring, something we had intended to do in the next five years anyway. So I chose the tile to go with the hardwood flooring. So this was not a little job. It was a half-house renovation.

The tile was installed in mid-October. On its face it looks ok, but it is not the best tile job I've ever seen. The more I walk on it, the more I find uneven places. Plus, the job is not finished.

The salesperson had cut the job into two parts: one for the tile, one for the hardwood. We had terrible issues with the tile and the installer was not welcome to return. Now we've issues with the hardwood - we wanted a simple change of direction in one room for the wood and some way to make that change in an open area without a transition strip (because that was something else to trip over), and for some reason this was a big problem -  and yesterday we cancelled that job out of sheer frustration. However, we are now left with an unfinished mess.




There is no quarter round along the baseboard, so you can see how badly that looks.



The carpet is not tacked down where it meets the tile. It's actually simply laying over top of the tile.

 

This is how it is sitting on the tile. I consider it a real trip hazard.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but this particular tile is raised
up enough at this end that you can stub your toe on it. If it were under the
table it would be one thing, but it's right in the main walk area.

I am greatly distressed by this and don't quite know where to go from here. I did not hear from the company today. I think if I knew I had a customer as upset as we are, I'd be calling and bending over backwards to try to fix the problems, but apparently we're not "big" enough players to warrant attention.

Looks like it might be time to drag out my poison pen and send off a letter to the company's manager and president.

The Finished Tile

The tile installers finished up on Saturday. Well, it's no completely finished. They didn't install the quarter round against the baseboard, but we are also taking up the carpeting soon and the next installers will do that. It will not be the same people.

I am happy with the look of the tile. It lightened the kitchen and changed the feel of the room. I need new rugs for the floor - the old ones won't do - and I think I need to do something different for a trash can now, but otherwise I am pleased. Those are minor details that I can take care over time.

Here are photos:

The dining area without the table.

The kitchen area.

A close-up of the tile.

The kitchen with part of the table and chairs. We took a leaf from the table so it is much smaller than it was. I haven't decided if I'm going to add that back or keep the table tiny.

Looking into the area from the living room. Don't you think the trash can needs to be a different color?

The kitchen area with the floor mats back. The one in front of the fridge definitely doesn't match now.
 

Remodeling and updating is a pain. We don't do much of it because it is so much hassle. Besides, with just the two of us, it's not like the house gets worn out. We don't have visitors often and we're fairly neat people.

When the time comes I'll show you the new hardwood floor we are putting down to replace the carpeting. We are hoping this will help my allergies. We'll see.

The Fraying of the Nerves

Wednesday, a day later than scheduled, two men showed up to begin to repair my kitchen floor.

They did not show up until 11 a.m. that morning. They worked until 1:15 p.m. and then did not return until 3:30 p.m. and they worked until 5 p.m.  I do not know why they only worked so little.

I do know it pissed me off royally. That's not even 4 hours of work.

Thursday they worked from 10 - 12:45, took another two hour lunch, and worked from 2:15  - 4:15. That was not 4 hours of work, either.

Today, one guy showed up at 10:15. The other guy showed up at 11:30 and then at 12:20, they both left. They returned at 1 p.m.

They are in there working now. (Can you see my eyes rolling in my head?) I expect them to try to clear out at any minute. What will I say?

This was supposed to be a two-day job. I have been without my washer and dryer since Tuesday night. I haven't been able to cook since Tuesday night. These cats & jammers boys show no inclination of hurrying and I do not want them in my house any longer. I am about to scream.

To their credit they are doing a good job when they do actually work. It's just that they don't work much.

This was the original parquet flooring. It was 30 years old.

This was the reason it was being replaced, because the dishwasher leaked and ruined the flooring in this area.

This is the laundry room, which we also decided to replace with the same new flooring. This stick-on laminate-type flooring is original. Like the parquet, it is 30 years old.

Boxes of tile

This is what the tile looks like.

This is the kitchen in the living room.

This the removal of parquet. It came up very easily.

The cement floor with old glue on it.

The tile in the laundry room, for some reason, proved stubborn and did not come up quite so easily.

This is the new flooring. The little white dots are spacers.

The view from the other side.

It'll look nice if it ever gets finished. When a two-day job turns into a five-day one, somebody's head needs to roll.

I'll show you pictures if it ever gets grouted and completed.

Renovations, Exterior

The work continues today on replacing the windows and doors. The saw is singing its whining high-pitched screech even as I type this. However, they are in the garage now so I am a bit more insulated than I was when they were in the house proper.

It is very hard to concentrate in a construction site.

Here are exterior shots of the back side of the house. They still have to replace the front door.

This is what the exterior looked like prior to installation:



French door with shutters.



Kitchen window



Most of the back of the house showing the double windows.

Here are pictures of the exterior of the newly installed windows and back door:



We switched from a French door to a patio door. We think it will give us a little more room.
I put some window stickers on there because I am afraid the animals will become confused by the glass. We haven't decided what to do there as far as shutters or curtains or whatever.



New kitchen window. Different angle. The colors are similar but these Pella windows offer more glass space and less white area.

New double window.

The new door and the kitchen window.

This part of the renovation project should end next week. Hopefully it will cut down on drafts and heating. We also found several areas of rotten wood and concealed mold, which we cleaned up and sprayed down with mold elimination stuff. This should also help my allergies and sinus issues considerably in the long run. I sure hope so, anyway.

We still do not have install dates for flooring. That is aggravating and I am starting to question our choice of provider. We can't plan anything because we have no clue when the floor installation will begin. 
 
 

The Work Begins

This was the French door my husband installed in 2010. It has always leaked. It was a cheap Lowes door.

This is the hole that is left when said door is removed.

This is the new door in the process of being installed.

The finished door, except we need to decide if we're going to paint it or stain it a color to match the rest of the
oak wood in the house.
 

Next up was this double window. I have never liked the color of these replacement windows.
My husband insisted on the woodgrain look but I knew when we bought them
it wouldn't look good. But sometimes you pick your battles. It was easier to
live with ugly windows than fight over it. But they leaked so, oh well.

This double window had some wood rot and mold around it. Fortunately all of this came out and was replaced
with new wood.

We also sprayed things down with mold elimination spray that we have here. I use it all the time when I see anything
that looks like mold and it works well.

The window hole without the rotten wood in it.

The window replaced. Doesn't that look better, that off-white inside instead of that brown
interior on the sashes? Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

Renovations Underway

At long last some of the housing renovation projects are underway.

The men arrived this morning to install new doors and windows.

This has become an entire house-fix-it project. It initially started out as a door replacement project. The Pella representative gave us a good price on new windows, too, and so we decided to replace those as well. 
Astute long-time readers may remember we replaced the windows in 2010. Those windows failed, and the company that made them, Gorell, went bankrupt. Southwest Sunroom & Windows out of Salem sold us these windows and installed them, but wouldn't or couldn't honor the window warranty, only their installation warranty, which did us little good. We fought with them for five years as the windows failed one after the other. The company that bought out Gorell, Soft-Lite, did replace some of the windows but it was a constant battle to have the replacements made, and then the new windows fit loosely, which only let in that much more air.



That was the biggest waste of money - and probably the biggest mistake - we have ever made in our 35 years of marriage.

This is what the windows look like now. It is hard to take a picture of a window that shows this clearly, but here goes:

I think you can really tell from the bottom one how bad the glass is. That is not dirt. That is glass failure. This is the worst one in the house but several of the windows have spots or areas where you can't see out of them because the glass failed.

The remaining project involves flooring. We weren't planning on replacing flooring this year but a leaking dishwasher changed those plans. We will be replacing the kitchen parquet hardwood with tile, and we decided while we were in the middle of tearing things up we may as well pull up the carpet and put down hardwood floors.

We are hoping this will help my allergies, if nothing else.

Lots of hammering going on now with the new installation. I'll show you some of that tomorrow.

Kitchen Update

Kitchen with reinstalled cabinet and dishwasher

The kitchen is partially back together. We have a sink and a dishwasher again. The floor, however, remains a problem.

Being old, that little 1/4 inch drop is something we must watch to keep from tripping. I've put a few mats down in hopes of helping that, but we also are tripping over the mats. Yikes!

We are having difficulty finding tile people and getting quotes from flooring companies. I'm not sure what the deal is - it's not a small job. Or maybe that's the problem, it's a big job.

Anyway, the cabinet facing is the old one. The "furniture hospital" removed the facing and put it into a new box. They also fixed the toe board on the cabinet to the left of the dishwasher.

Stay tuned as we try to sort out the kitchen floor. I'm hoping before Christmas . . .

Still Dealing with the Dishwasher Damage

The insurance company dragged its feet for an entire week, but after an unhappy policy holder turned up at the agency office to complain on Monday, things began moving again.

For two weeks we had this hole, minus the flooring, which was removed on August 6.
Then the waiting began.

Minus the flooring. Alas, my parquet. I loved you for 30 years.

Tuesday the plumber showed up. Really nice guy from Eagle Rock, Richard Craft. Seemed to know his stuff and I give him a big thumbs up for a job well done.

After he left, I had this:

No sink.
 

Today I went to take the car to Christiansburg for service, and when I returned, I found this:

No cabinet and the drywall's been cut out.

The next step is to have a drywall person come in (I hope I don't need an insulation person, too. Surely not.). That person will fix the hole. The reason there is a hole is because the wall was black with mold from the leak from the dishwasher. There was mold on the cabinet, too.

Trying to figure out dinner when you have nothing but a tiny bathroom sink to wash a big pot in is a real challenge. I think we might be eating out a lot until this issue is fixed.

Lesson? Keep a closer eye on things that deal with water. Water in the sink is good. Water in the cabinets, not good.

When Dishwashers Die A Violent Death

Sunday morning I padded into the kitchen to make tea. I noticed a dark color on the parquet flooring near a cushion mat at the sink.

Upon removing the mat, we found that the dishwasher had leaked badly. Perhaps it has been leaking for sometime, I don't know. If so, I never noticed the water. I have someone who helps me with the mopping once a month and she said she hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary there last month. So maybe it has only been leaking a week or so. I have no way to know.

My husband and nephew yanked the dishwasher out of the wall and carried it outside.

I called the insurance company to see if our policy covered this type of thing. It does. Boy, do they move fast when you tell them you're allergic to mold.

Where the dishwasher sat. See the dark colored wood? Damaged wood.

The water went to the sides of the dishwasher, and up the cabinets.

This was the worse damage to the floor.

This doesn't look so good either. That's the side of the kitchen cabinet.

What to do?

This is the bottom of the dishwasher. My husband said this is the pump casing and it split apart.

By 4:30 Monday, a "mitigation team" was out here and they determined all that wood had to come up. ::sniff:: My beautiful parquet floor.

Because the glue was wet (and 30 years old), it came up fairly easily.

This damage is troubling, to say the least.

I kept this floor looking nice for 30 years. They last if you take care of them.

Now I don't know what happens next. The insurance company will decide my floor's fate, I suppose.

The "mitigation" guy said he was going to recommend that the entire floor be replaced. This flooring is no longer available so there is no way we can match it up. Unfortunately the flooring runs into the dining room area as well. We have an open floor concept (we were ahead of our time apparently when we built in 1987) and so the dining room and kitchen run together. That is why there was parquet in the kitchen to begin with.

This looks like the beginning of a very long process.