Insane on the membrane, in the window

So it did not take long for issues to develop with the tile installation which started yesterday which I was monitoring via my webcam.  The crew of three people showed up, one woman and two men, literally a family, somewhere between 9 and 10AM.  They quickly identified the cracks in the floor and said they would need to be addressed (in heavily accented and hard to understand English).

The first thing told to Cindy was Home Depot normally charges 300 to repair cracks and do leveling but she said they could do it for $100, which sounded like they were offering to do it outside the umbrella of Home Depot.  $100 sounded great to me which I relayed to Cindy.  Well then the woman says they did not have any materials with them to do these sort of repairs which I thought was odd.  They also identified that we were delivered the wrong type of grout.  We had nine bags of unsanded grount, we needed the sanded variety.

So there were a series of phone calls from the woman to her supervisor, from the supervisor to Cindy and finally the supervisor to me.  The end result of this was the $100 resolution exploding into $1100.  The supervisor said with all of the cracks on the foundation the way to address it was to lay down a membrane which isolates the tile from the floor, making it immune to any stresses on the floor that caused the cracks.  It sounded like a good remedy but the price was still shocking.  For whatever reason this membrane costs $1.50 a square foot, more than the high quality carpet pad we ordered.  Well I had little choice, I wanted the tile to be installed in the best way possible.  I authorized the work and provided the CC info over the phone to the supervisor. Well the installers did not have the membrane either and had to go get it.  Cindy used that time to take the incorrect grout back to the store and exchange it for the right stuff.  Everyone arrived back at the house within 5 minutes of each other.

The installers got busy laying down the pricey membrane and laying the first section of tile.  The adhesive used for the membrane had some quite nasty fumes, Cindy kept Tuki in the bedroom to try to protect him from it as much as possible.   She stayed outside a good portion of the day as well to avoid the stink.  My big brother cam let me monitor the work which ended relatively early in the day for some reason.  Supposedly they plan to arrive earlier today and work later.

Cindy had to make a second unplanned trip to Home Depot late in the day.  The metal strips that separate the new tile from the existing flooring that we paid for were not in the pile of stuff delivered to our place.  The installers said they would need the strips for today’s work, for some reason the idea of them simply picking it up on the way to the house today was not in the scope of possibilities.  So in total Cindy put around 80 miles in on the road to address HD screw ups, something we will be pointing out when we get our post work survey.  We are going to look for some sort of compensation for the mistakes.

Cindy said that we could not walk on the tile last night, we had to gain access to the bedroom via the window.  It made for some challenges throughout the evening as we exited and entered the house like a burglar repeatedly.

Cindy and I both liked the section of the floor that had the tile on it.  The faux wood looked really good against the wall colors.  We are very excited on how transformed our living space is going to be when all of the work is completed. Today I am hoping some serious progress is made.

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Hilary Clinton are the current cast of declared presidential contenders. For me the last thing I want to think about is another toxic presidential election cycle.

Have you started watching Daredevil on Netflix yet?  If not you should be.