Home headaches, and home triumphs

The home repairs and upgrades we started nearly a year ago continue. Some of it has gone very smoothly...and some, not so much. The good first:

The source of several of the problems that needed immediate repair was our big holly tree. I don't know how old it was--it was already mature when we bought the house a dozen years before--but as hollies go, it was huge. It stretched taller than the rooftop.

If you look closely at the trunk, you see what a favorite this tree was among woodpeckers.

Unfortunately, Holly had been planted far too close to the house. Roots were reaching the foundation, and in its last year, Holly had sent one narrow new limb right under the siding while another brushed the top and side of the chimney.

Only about 18 inches left between trunk and house. Ugh.

I got an excellent recommendation for a tree company from a nearby former colleague. The crew was fantastic. They got all the way from estimate to completion in only three days, and they cleaned up so thoroughly after removing the holly that there was literally no sign it had been there before. No root knots, no stump remains, not even a pile of wood chips. It made my replanting this newly sunny garden bed a breeze!

Holly was gorgeous, but here you can see part of the damage it had done to the siding. And having sunshine on the entire length of the chimney has made a big difference in moisture inside this corner of the house--a relief.

Installing new gutters, fixing the holly-induced damage, and a few small-but-better-not-ignored roof problems came next. The scheduling and the repairs themselves for these jobs went relatively well, too, although those crews didn't pick up after themselves nearly as well as the tree company did. A couple weeks ago--a full 8 months after the job!--Boy 2 found yet another chunk of trimmed-off gutter in a flower bed. Still, I'm glad to have those jobs done now that hurricane season is upon us again.

Next came a handful of minor plumbing and electrical repairs and upgrades. Those all went very well, with minimal fuss and mess and blessedly small impact on the wallet. No fancy pictures to share here, but believe me when I tell you our new GFI outlets, moisture exhaust fans, and solid dryer venting make me feel much better.

And then there's the not so good.

The so-called pro I hired last August to regrout my shower bungled the job colossally. He used the wrong type and color of grout, smeared it OVER tiles instead of just between them, ignored large gaps that left the wallboard underneath exposed to water (the reason I contracted for grout in the first place), and didn't clean up the drips and splatters before they hardened to stone. Chunks of the new grout started falling back off the wall, too, within the first week, revealing that he hadn't bothered to removed the old failed grout before applying the new. Oh, and apparently he washed a bunch of unused grout down the drain, too, if the solid clog that suddenly appeared (plumber again...) was any clue.

Just look at that narrow, even, neat join. NOT! (And this is one of the better ones....)

Here's a nice summary shot: blobs of excess grout on both tile and marble shelf; old gray unsanded grout still intact with new white sanded slathered right on top; and sloppy lines. What a beauty.

In short, he left my bathroom in worse condition than before he "fixed" it. The job of redoing it right is so huge that I couldn't find any other tile/grout/masonry person willing to take it on. Apparently the scraping it would take to remove all the smeared and splattered grout practically guarantees that more than a few tiles would be chipped or broken along the way. I don't have spares on hand, and this type is no longer in stock, so no one wants the liability. The only contractors who would consider the job after seeing Mr. Incompetent's mess firsthand started their quotes with, "First we rip out the entire existing shower...."

So. With the instructions one competent-but-unwilling tile guy gave me, I grudgingly patched it up myself. Not a complete regrout (I'm afraid of ruining this pretty blue tile, too), but enough repair to use the shower until what remains of the bad grout falls apart and I can hire it out right. Now that I know who NOT to look for.

All that is to say, You don't know the definition of "tedious" until you've picked grout from 1/8-inch joins, crumb by crumb, with a safety knife.

Just the beginning. In this corner you see the sloppiest work. Curly or Moe or whatever his name was had spread nearly 1/2-inch wide swaths over the 1/8 joins on this side.

It took me two solid afternoons and a whole lot of keep-the-kids-occupied videos. Let's all save ourselves a stroke and NOT calculate that time in contractor labor hours! But I can now say that, while the grout is only slightly less ugly than before (since I just repaired the water-exposed gaps, not all the mismatch and overspread), the shower is usable again, without constant worry about what's seeping into the bathroom walls.

That was barely done when we had a new problem: shattered sliding door glass. I was surprised what a complicated process repair was. It's a top-quality door we had no intention of replacing altogether, which would have been the much quicker fix. But this good older door is no longer a standard size. By the time the new glass was custom cut, delivered, and installed, the job took 4 weeks.

A long wait, yes, but having intact glass certainly beats the alternative...especially during rainy season.

The whole home improvement list isn't complete just yet, but I'm taking a breather from it all for the next few weeks. Then the next few jobs will be either so minor or so dull that they won't even be worth telling about here. What I'm looking forward to comes last: rebuilding the deck. I'm sure there will be pictures then since the plan there is "upgrade" and "redesign" rather than just repair. A fun home matter, I hope!

Assuming licensing requirements ensure I can get a sensible deck builder, that is. Let's cross our fingers.