Trained, licensed professionals

In April, we started to completely remodel our bathroom. Anyone who has seen it knows why. We are total do-it-yourselfers, and after having plumbers, electricians, a tile-layer, and roofers do work for us, we remember why.

We had a lot of plumbing work to be done... removal of old lines and "stack" and installation of new lines. The first visit from the plumbers took all day, we think. Though all four of us were home, they didn't say, "Hey, we're done... wanna look at the work?" or even "Bye... bill's in the mail." They just took off. We were sure if they were done or not, and thought by the look of the basement they just had to be coming back. They left a half-inch of watery stinky filthy ick on half the basement floor, and watery stinky filthy icky footprints all over the basement, kitchen, porch, and deck. No wonder they didn't tell us they were leaving. Later, the plumbers (different guys, same company) installed lines that were too short to reach the sink, neglected to inform us of how much space they'd need to run the shower lines, and decided to do the soldering work on the kitchen counter.

Electricians.... just a few little issues with these yokels. They didn't seem to understand where to put anything, so now we have outlets/controls in some odd spots on the walls. We have a set of outlets right next to the sink; one pair is GFCI, the other isn't.... wha??? Is the non-GFCI OK since it's a quarter inch further away from the sink? And, guys, don't wait until you get on a job to call the homeowner to ask, "white, ivory, or bisque," cuz I can't tell over the phone what the difference between ivory and bisque is. So, of course, I picked wrong.

Tile guy... he kept in touch with us from our first contact in March through completion of the job. However, he waited until the day of the job to show us the grout samples, then warned us that some colors would take a few days to arrive. Considering the toilet had already been pulled up, we settled for not-what-we-wanted simply out of necessity. If he'd only been bright enough to bring this up at any point in the three months prior, we'd have been fairly happy with this guy. Except, of course, that some of the tiles aren't level, which is why we decided to hire a "professional" in the first place.

Roofers... pretty simple job they had. We wanted them to replace the flashing on the chimney and vent pipe so that water wouldnt' seep down onto our fabulous new drywall. We also needed a vent over the bathroom for the fan. The didn't show up the afternoon they said they would... but did come the next day. Kid calls to tell me "the roofers are here" and I'm home within ten minutes, but no one's there. Turns out that they didn't replace the flashing, they just tarred. They didn't install the bath fan vent, they just installed a vent. And, at some point they needed an extension cord, which they didn't bring with them, so they pulled the one out from under the deck that we had BUILT the deck over so we could have power on the far corner. Complete effing morons, if you ask me.

I'll not tell you about the guy who did the steps out front a while ago (job was to take about three days, ended up taking a week... and the form "slipped", so the damn steps still slope back and collect water, which was why we wanted to replace them in the first place) or the guy who built the deck frame (square corners must be bad juju... and watch out for that hump in the middle). I hope we never have to pay people to come and "fix up" our property ever again.