The Eichler
Wednesday March 06th 2019, 11:27 pm
Filed under: Life

The contractor came. Chris is the guy who fixed up the mess that the original guy left behind on our remodel 25 years ago, and I wouldn’t want to hire anybody else. Having lived through rain dripping into the overhead light fixtures and coming out the light switch on the other side of the room, when the water heater was set up to leak carbon monoxide (I know, Mom and Dad. Again, right?), the gas and water lines didn’t meet code (why didn’t the inspectors catch that), when we had twelve buckets and had to get bigger ones to catch the rain from our previously working roof–and so many finishing details done wrong, when even a goof plate was too small to cover the hole cut in the wall for the switch plate–in two rooms… When they hung a light fixture such that you couldn’t open one of the doors in the pantry, and instead of replacing the new wooden plank in the ceiling when they moved it to where it was supposed to have gone all along, they just filled the damaged beam in with putty… (And there it remains.)

Chris stood in my kitchen one day back then, looking at that and the slider with the two tall windows beside it that were supposed to be to the same height but had been framed to a mismatch. He was quietly steamed but he wasn’t going to badmouth anybody.

“What’s wrong?” I prompted, giving him permission to say it.

“I get so upset with people who don’t take pride in their work.”

You want someone who’s good and who’s honest working on your house, you want Chris.

We’re all a little older now. He told me his family still has the stuffed animal I knit his kids from their Samoyed’s fur, the beloved dog that we had fun having in our fenced-in yard while he worked. He told stories back then on her barking at skunks at their house, but she never did it at mine. She was on squirrel patrol here. She is long gone, but a bit of her lives on.

He’ll get me a quote within a few days and we need a week of dry weather first for that concrete.

Looking at the divided shed that took on all that rain damage from the redwood’s effects he considered a moment, but no, it does, it needs a rebuild; you can’t un-rot that wood and there’s no sense in putting a new roof onto that. It’s not a big project, he comforted me.

Now I have an idea of what our driveway is going to be like. And he’ll fix that dangerous gap from where the city lowered the sidewalk but not (despite my objections) our walkway to match. I forgot to ask if we can angle things so there’s a space where I can plant my Kishu mandarin on the other side; I’ve already talked to the neighbors about that, so I know they’re good with it.

And so it begins.


3 Comments so far
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We also have much going on re the house these days..or it that daze? Met with the arborist this morning, standing out in a light rain for an hour….waited hours for the new, new oven to be delivered…when they finally arrived ( why is it always the last half hour of the 4 hour window?) they opened the box to find a broken window on the lower oven. I wonder how long it will take before the new, new, new oven will finally arrive?

Comment by Ruth 03.07.19 @ 12:08 am

Sounds like a keeper! Wish I’d had one when we did our work. Somehow he dug up part of our required dry well and mixed dirt in with the gravel. Someday I need to get it fixed.

Comment by Anne 03.07.19 @ 12:19 am

Priceless!

Comment by ccr in MA 03.07.19 @ 6:43 am



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