April 17, 2009
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Painters Everywhere
All last summer I tried to get the outside of our house painted, and signed a contract with the people who were doing work on the house next door. By the beginning of September, they were promising “next week” for about 2 weeks. Then I got a $500. check from the owner and the explanation that he’d had to go out of business because half of his crew had left to form their own company and he was going bankrupt. Or something. Anyway, he paid back my entire deposit over the winter.
Meanwhile, I signed up with Angie’s list and called 3 top-rated painting companies. One came out to do an estimate and said they’d not be able to get to doing the work until Spring because he still had contracts to finish up before the weather got cold. Since this was the one with lots of favorable comments, I signed with him. They started at the end of last week, had to take 2 days off this job because of cold and rainy weather. But yesterday and today have been nice and there seem to be painters everywhere I look! The house looks much nicer already, and they’ve repaired some rotted wood problems no one else hase been able to solve. It helps to have a real carpenter on the crew, I guess. They had to totally replace the door jamb, threshold and a couple inches of floor in the solarium. I always knew the original installers weren’t very bright. But it did last (sort of) for 14 years. I now know why the paint never stayed on that door jamb, anyway.
So we spent last night with only plastic instead of a door – I insisted they put up something so the cats wouldn’t get out. At the moment the cats are cowering in Tom’s study to get away from all the commotion.
