So you may be wondering what our “new” apartment looks like. If I showed you pictures of what the place looked like when we bought it, you might question our judgement. The apartment had not been updated in decades and had been empty for several months. These photos will make great befores for “Before and After” features in future posts.
Now for the story of how we tried to repair all the holes in the wall left by the electricians…. I’m extremely fortunate to have a father who is very handy. I can’t remember a time during my childhood when my father hired someone to fix something around the house. He did and still does everything himself and he does it well. He generously agreed to help us fix up our place, starting with patching up all the holes and trenches in the walls (See Our New Home). However, after a week of working 12 hour days and not completing even one room we knew we had bitten off more than we could chew. It was time to call in the professionals.
Using ServiceMagic.com, an online contractor referral Web site, I found Bestwall Plastering, a company with 25 years of experience in plastering. Kieran, the company’s owner, promptly came to give us an estimate for the work we needed to have done. Impressed by his knowledge, pictures of his work and the fact that he said he could finish the entire apartment in 9 days, we hired him. He worked diligently over those nine days, but those nine days weren’t without trouble.
During our initial conversation during the estimate appointment, we informed Kieran that we wanted the walls repaired, finished, and ready to paint. Two days into the job, he claimed the contract stated that he was only supposed to fill the holes in the wall left by the electrician. He wanted nothing to do with the many cracks and other problems that were caused when the electricians made holes in the near 100-year-old plaster in our apartment. His unwillingness to honor our original request left us with these gems (click photos to enlarge them):
Not quite the work we expected from someone with 25 years of experience. (We’ve since learned to be more selective in the contractors that we hire, but that doesn’t always prevent problems from occurring.) I won’t go into the details of our attempts to fix these problems. They aren’t pretty. However, we were able to move forward with our renovation work and have come to view this experience as a lesson learned.
