Step it up, sign off at 90%

So I worked from home all day both virtually and literally.  I was home because Cindy had an appointment in the morning so I needed to be there because the tile installers would be.  I wanted to multi-task so I took one of our laptops out to the chicken coop/shed and connected to the office via wi-fi.  The connection wasn’t great but it got the job done.  I would simply check the laptop periodically as I was doing work on the coop.

The main focus was getting the steps for the shed finished.  Cindy started the task the day before, getting two of the the three stair frames in place.  For the treads of the steps we decided to use left over composite lumber that I have had sitting around for years.  It is a byproduct of when I covered the dog deck years ago.  The color of the lumber went along with the tans and browns of the shed and chicken run plus it basically will last forever.  The steps looked good and felt rock solid by the time I was finished.

I worked on a number of other small coop related projects during the day as I checked in with the office.  Cindy was out there with me most of the time.  We got a lot done.  At this point there are only a few more things we need to get done before we let the chickens move into their new, greatly expanded living quarters.

So before the tile installers arrived yesterday I called into the installation headquarters to talk about the lack of the stain blocker we paid for being added to the grout.  I told them we had 9 bottles of the stuff delivered and we still had 9 bottles after they grouted on Wednesday.  They said they would call the installers and find out the deal.  So I get a call back.  The woman tells me the installers said they did not grout yet.  Huh??  I was a bit flabbergasted.  I told the woman that I know what grouted tile looks like.  She asked me to send her a pic of the area I was talking about, which I did.  Once she saw the pic she realized the installers were not being accurate.

So I got off the phone with the main office only a few minutes before the installer and his family showed up in his new F250 Crew Cab Super Duty 4×4.  I opened the garage door and asked if they heard from the main office about the stain blocker.  The husband speaks basically no English.  The wife speaks bits and pieces of it but nowhere close to conversational level.  Their son was the best English speaker but he was not great either.  So anyway, the woman tells me “We used, we used” as she started digging through the empty boxes of tile.  At the bottom was a bottle of the stain blocker.  Evidently they had a bottle of their own that they used for that batch of grout instead of using the stuff we had.  Ok fine, mystery solved.

So the tile installation went on all day long and into the evening.  Their late starts and early finish times the first two days laid the groundwork for the long day.  The skill work was almost all exclusively done by the husband.  He did a really nice job getting the tile flat and fit it very well around the corners and obstacles.  The son did a lot of the grunt work.  The wife did stuff like mopping the floor, and grouting, poorly.

Cindy and I noticed in the area that was grouted on Wednesday that the joints did not appear to be filled very high.  When you walked across in socks or bare feet it was literally painful as the overly exposed edge of the tile dug in.   The area that was grouted on Thursday was even worse.  Since I have grouted before I assumed the shallow grout was the end result of the woman not pressing enough of it into the joints and being overly aggressive with the sponge that is used to clean the joint after grouting.  The bottom line was Cindy and I were not happy with it.

They were there until after 7PM.  They had all of the tile cut and placed in thinset by that time but over 1/2 of the tile needed to be grouted yet which is supposed to happen today.  The woman asked Cindy to basically sign off on the job last night so she could send the paperwork to her supervisor.  In as nice of a way as Cindy could muster, she told the woman she wasn’t going to sign off until all of the work is complete.  The wife seemed to think this was unreasonable, and said “we 90% done”.  Ok great, when you are 100% done we will sign it.  I thought it was an odd request.  It actually was good that Cindy was the one who intercepted that request as she is generally less trustworthy of people than I am.

We also had more minor detail annoyances where we did not have enough grout to finish the work, meaning Cindy had to make her third unscheduled trip to Home Depot this morning to pick more up.  We also will have to return a bunch of extra stuff including tile, thinset and stain blocker when everything is done.  Even though Cindy and I both are very happy with how the new tile looks and how it is installed (minus the shallow grout), the numerous list of details that were screwed up with the install are really piling up.

This weekend of course will be another work packed affair.  We need to get stuff that belongs in the main living area back there and then stuff all of the furniture/items in the office and bedrooms in the same area as well.  One more week of chaos and then things can return to normal.