[quote=“BAMBAMM5144”]
[quote=“explauren”]I am 100% completely not at fault. Repeatedly I was told the siding would take around one week, and we had two days of rain delay. As I said, they assigned one person to do a 40 square job. His work is excellent, but I’ve never seen someone try to work slower. It’s vertical vinyl, and he’d go up on the lift, measure one piece, come down, cut that piece, go up again, etc. Worked 9-4. And the mess is completely his fault because if it had taken AT ALL a reasonable amount of time there wouldn’t have been snow on the ground covering it up. This is part of why I’m completely disgusted with them. The shingles: their fault. The timeline: their fault. The inability to clean up in a timely fashion: their fault.
Incidentally, I’ve had two of the subs I’ve used say they’d hire me if I wanted to get into construction. I may be new at this, but I’m good.
Some of the work I approved at the beginning of the job. That’s about $300 of it, and I agree I should pay that. They tried to charge me $400 for my electrician borrowing the lift after hours. I’m pissed because I was SO NICE about the roofing error, and now they’re trying to nickel-and-diming me on the siding. I mean, as long as we’re talking about ethics, if you put the wrong roof on someone’s house, would you try to scam them on the siding?[/quote]
How else is one guy supposed to do siding by himself? Why does it matter if he works slow or not, are you paying him his wages? Did the length of time truly affect the ability to live in your home? We often do jobs in the winter and make sure the homeowner knows we will have to come back in spring and let them withhold a hundred or two dollars if they feel like it.
It seems you should be going to your electrician for using that machine. Was he allowed to use it? Did he pay for the fuel used? Who would’ve been liable had he tipped it or damaged the machine in anyway? Did you tell the electrician he could use it?
As far as the shingle color, I don’t agree with it but you said it was OKAY. Either it is okay or it isn’t. You can’t go back now and say you aren’t happy with the shingle color although you already admitted that you are.
How exactly are they “scamming” you on the siding? What did the original contract call for and what unforeseen errors did they run into?
Sorry to play devils advocate but after dealing with thousands of homeowners and being on the other side of things a few times, I know there are two sides to every story.[/quote]
Re: the lift, I was not in the picture. The electrician used it for max 45 minutes to install the floods, and the sider said nothing about there being any cost. They removed that charge and said it was a misunderstanding.
I don’t care at all about the sider using the lift. Well, that’s not entirely true. He was all over the thing for a few weeks mucking up my grade, but while I find that irritating, it’s expected. The length of time was an issue for two reasons. One is that since it took so long, now he can’t do cleanup until the snow melts. If he’d been faster, or picked up each day, we wouldn’t have the cleanup issue. Secondly, while we weren’t living here, no, it didn’t matter. But I was clear about when we would be, and now my first week in my new house in the quiet country, my kids’ naps are screwed up by the sider hammering away outside their rooms. Oh, and not being done meant my electrician couldn’t set the front porch fixture and thus get his final inspection. We got approval for the temp occupancy we needed, but it’s costing the electrician $75 for the extra inspection.
I don’t know that they’re scamming me on the siding. It just feels like that. The contract requires anything over $500 additional work have a signed change order. They don’t have one, of course. Surprising me with $1400 extra is what makes it feel icky.
Some of it was trim around the garage and exterior doors. Apparently that’s not something they usually do, though I’ve no idea why. Some of it was framing the returns for the soffit. I’d wanted the soffit to be angled, but the sider didn’t order long enough siding (vertical vinyl) to make it all the way up without a third row. We agreed to make the soffit flat so there wouldn’t be a delay in getting the longer pieces. Of course that’s laughable now, since there was ample time to have made the switch. Some of it is trimming on the front porch, which again, I don’t know why that wasn’t included. I explicitly said I wanted the whole shebang, that I wanted to wave my hand at it and not have to mess with anything outside for decades. And all this after screwing up the roof. Plus, that roof screwup meant I had to change my siding color so it wasn’t totally awful, which means I got my second choice of siding, too. We’re at Cobblestone gray roof and Herringbone siding, should’ve been Weathered Wood/Clay.
I appreciate devil’s advocating. I’m trying to figure out what a reasonable solution (i.e., discount) would be fair, and I’m all pissed and I’m sure that makes me less rational. I should also say that the quality of the work is superb. It’s just not what I picked and now it costs more too? You build your forever house and it doesn’t look like you thought, that’s upsetting.
