Picking Up the Pieces…Lots of Little Drywall Pieces

Last Saturday Kai and Maria left for Denver, and they’ll be back on Friday. While they’re away, I’m painting and cleaning up the monumental mess in our house. The drywall guys finished on Saturday…actually, I should say, “stopped working.” Here’s the whole story:

We were hoping to get the drywall guys started in the 3rd week of March. Greg, our general contractor, hired a crew headed by a fellow known as “Nacho” to do the drywall work. We kept hearing they would start “soon,” and as one day lead to another, “soon” eventually revealed itself to be April 19. The plan was to deliver the drywall through a 2nd floor window, to save the effort of lugging it all up from the ground floor. But somehow the supplier’s driver didn’t get the message to have the equipment with him for a 2nd floor delivery, so he canceled for that day, and would come back “soon.”

“Soon” this time happened to be one week later, April 26. During the hour or so this huge truck with its small crane was in front of my house, the township inspector happens to drive down my street - what are the odds? I wasn’t there, but Greg told me that, oddly, he just drove right by. But Greg was worried, as he was fairly certain Nacho wasn’t licensed.

Nacho’s guys showed up the next day and put in a full day’s work, putting up about 80% of all the drywall. Greg warned us that the house would look like a bomb went off in it, and in fact, that’s exactly what it looked like - an almost unbelievable mess. They were working in the bathroom, the 2nd floor hallway, the dining room, and all of the 3rd floor, so the mess was just about everywhere. But it was all supposed to be over in a few days, so we just had to bite the bullet and get through it.

I was worried about my floors, since we had them all refinished when we moved in. Before the work started, I was imagining these guys dropping nails and grinding them into the floor with their boots, dropping hammers, etc. So I had Greg buy some drywall boards, not for the walls, but to lay down on the floors to protect them. It turns out that the delivery from the truck didn’t have enough boards, so without asking anyone, the guys just used the boards that were on the floor. I still had a layer of plastic and tarps that I had put down under the boards, so hopefully they would be sufficient to protect the floors (with all the mess, it wasn’t possible to put down something new).

The next day the guys showed up, and the inspector was waiting for them. They weren’t able to show him a license, so he got Nacho’s number from them, and then ordered them off the premises. I learned from Greg that Nacho told the inspector he had insurance, so he just had to make a short trip to the township building to do the paperwork for a license. Well, a week and half went by…Nacho was having trouble with a fax, then he was waiting for a document to show up in the mail, etc. In the meantime, our house was still a huge mess. Maria and I spent many hours cleaning just to get the place at least to a “barely livable” state. One evening during that time, Nacho’s guys showed up at 5 to finish putting up the boards. I guess they figured they wouldn’t get caught by the inspector if they showed up after hours. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but I let them in. A few days later, they showed up during the day, and Greg sent them home, since Nacho still didn’t have his license. We were ready to write him off, when on Friday, May 6, he called and said he finally has his license. He said his guys would be there that weekend to finish. So we made plans to be out of the house so they could work.

All weekend, nobody showed up. They finally appeared on Monday and put on the 1st and 2nd coats of joint compound. All that remained after that was to put on a 3rd coat, and then sanding, so we’re hoping this finally will be over by Wednesday. I called Greg and told him he needed to make it crystal clear to Nacho that the job has to be completely done ASAP if he wanted to get paid.

Nobody showed up until Friday, when they put on the 3rd coat. Friday night I had the privilege of speaking with this mysterious Nacho character myself. He managed to mumble some sort of apology. I did my best to balance my rage against my interest in just getting this done, since we were finally so close to the end. A while back I just wanted to drop him, but Greg said it would take a while to get someone new on the job. If we had any idea it would take this long to get to the end, we would have gotten rid of him. Nacho promised his guys would be there first thing on Saturday morning.

So two guys show up at 2 in the afternoon. They sanded for about 30 minutes and then took off before I realized what was happening. They did maybe half the sanding, and left all their broken drywall, empty soda cans, etc. all over the place. I called Greg and told him that I didn’t want them to come back, and that I’d finish it myself. Greg sent one of his own guys to help clean up.

I spent the rest of the weekend sanding, and for the rest of the week I’m painting and cleaning. My first priority is the bathroom, since we’ve had no shower curtain rod (and hence no shower curtain) all this time. One lucky thing in all of this is that my floors survived unscathed- I guess the plastic sheeting and the tarps were enough to protect them.

To top it all off, Greg checked with the township and it turns out Nacho never got his license. Which means he almost certainly lied about having insurance too. I’ll let you know what happens if and when Nacho sends a bill. It’ll be interesting to see if he has the nerve to ask for anything more than payment for materials.