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Gather round friends and let me take you back to the time in early 2019 when we hired a guy to replace our kitchen floor and he grovered it to a degree thought unobtainable by those who are not actually grover. The Necessary Background We bought the last bit of this particular type of porcelain tile because it was discontinued and on clearance. We originally hired this guy to replace the subfloor and lovely vinyl flooring, but during demo we realized the joists had rotted from moisture damage so we re-negotiated and agreed he'd replace all the joists as well. We had tons of issues with him. He would change plans on us without telling us first. He would constantly have to reschedule because he was taking other jobs. We would catch him in stupid lies constantly. Where Things Went Wrong We noticed after he put down the plywood subfloor that it didn't seem to be... level. It looked wavy, a thing that is generally undesirable for floors. When we pointed this out to him he said it'd be fine once he put the hardie backer down. He put the hardie backer down and it was still unlevel. We confronted him again. He came in and used and oscillating saw to shave down one part of one joist to try to make the floor level, then left to go to lunch. This did not fix the problem. When he came back and we again confronted him, he explained that he was going to pour leveling cement over everything and that would fix it. At this point we told him gently caress no, we weren't gonna do that, and that he needed to level the goddamn joists. He lied about sending a crew to do that so we finally fired him. Here's some photos of how unlevel it was when we fired him.      However, nothing could prepare us for what we found later We did not have enough money or resources to hire someone to fix his fuckups so we had to do it ourselves. We undid everything he did and started over from scratch. We made a lot of startling discoveries in the process of doing that. One thing we figured out was that, because this is an older house with footer boards that had a little railing that joists sit on, he instructed his guy to cut the same notch into all the joists and just drop em in, instead of having him run a string. But that was not nearly as bad as the rest of what we found when we really dug in. Amongst other things: We found that he cut the tongues off all the tongue and groove plywood.  We found that he installed the treated plywood with the treated side that reads THIS SIDE DOWN facing up.  We found that he secured the gas line to the joist using a camping fork we had thrown in the garbage after doing smores and hot dogs the week before.   We found that he used wall screws driven into the wall at various conflicting angles as a method of securing the gas line to the wall.  We found that this is how he spliced in a replacement section of footer board:   One of the other things that contributed to being unlevel: his unliteral change of plan from smaller joists with hangers to bigger joists with notches meant that this joist couldn't really properly sit on the pillar.  Then there's this   I don't have photos of this, but we also found that he didn't use any of the pre-set screw holes that are placed on the hardie backer siding and that he didn't install any sort of moisture barrier. The Happy Ending We did eventually finish the entire floor, and have continued to slowly rebuild our kitchen. We still have a lot of work to do, but we've finished the cabinets and countertops, the shelves and a table, and all that's left now are doors, drawers, and touchups. We thought about suing him, but didn't really have the time and energy to deal with dragging him to court over $1900.     Before  After    Postscript I posted a Google review of this dudes business with the THIS SIDE DOWN photo as the lead image and the other photos attached along with a big descriptor and it was the most viewed review for his business. For a while that picture was what came up if you Googled him. I'm pretty sure he changed his business name for that reason alone. He's currently in bankruptcy proceedings trying to get out of paying at least 1 active lawsuit filed by another person he hosed over, as well as some other potential claims that he listed in his creditor matrix. We continue to be cool and funny and hot and talented, and we have a good floor that's way better than what he would've given us. Eat poo poo Joe.
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Sep 2, 2023 00:05
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| # ? May 9, 2024 20:02 |
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 Oh dear. Glad you've seen the back of him.
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Sep 2, 2023 00:18
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