MIAMI CONTRACTOR BLUES PART 3

THE PLUMBER'S VISIT TO OUR PREVIOUS HOUSE

The plumbing guy says:

“That toilet in the garage is done the lazy way.”

“Instead of breaking the floor and running to the opposite wall to pick up the main line, they just raised the floor and tied the pipe into your bathroom toilet.”

“You shouldn’t have done it that way?”

“Why did you do it like that?”

"Yep, just like I said when we made the appointment on the phone, the owner from 35 years ago commenced a project to put a bath in the garage to convert it into a sort of crummy apartment.”

So yes, I get it, what they did is the lazy route.

But you are looking at a 27-year-old brand new homeowner.

And the work looks like it was done in the 60s, when I lived 1,000 miles away and was in the first grade.

So why on earth would you expect me to be able to answer the theory, approach and methodology of something that a moron, let alone you the specialist, could tell happened decades before I had any control over the property we’re talking about?

MIAMI CONTRACTOR BLUES PART 2

NEWS BULLETIN: THE HOMEOWNER WHO YOU ARE TRYING 

TO IMPRESS WITH YOUR EXPERTISE HAD NO CONTROL

OVER THINGS DONE TO HIS HOUSE BEFORE HE OWNED IT

Why does every contractor ask you about stuff done to your house…

 A)  Like you did it yourself, despite telling him when you set up this appointment that don’t do handyman stuff?

B) Implying you did the previously botched job, even when it's obvious the work was done 50 years ago?

Windows, roof, appliances, flooring -- you name it.

When they walk in the door, I politely tell them the house is damn near 100
years old and had a fire in the 40s or 50s.

I tell them, by city permitted and approved work, we fixed and legalized some weirdo, ill-advised stuff done possibly in the 60s through 80s.

Though I'm no teenager, I'm pretty sure I look about 50...or 100.

But the window guy says:

"Why didn't you use standard openings?”

“Replacing them would cost a lot less if it was a standard sizes.”

Uh, as discussed just five freaking minutes ago, the house was built in 1920.

According to the abstract, by two old boys from Georgia.

You see any good old boys from Georgia running around la pequena Habana in the last half century?

I didn’t think so.

Anyhow, I’m guessing back in the early 20^th century, when two craftsmen were building a home, when they wanted a window space, they framed it out on the spot.

They didn't go to Home Depot for a production built, standard size – because there was no Home Depot. 

The 50+ guy who you are driving insane right now was born in the 60s, not 1900.

So could we not pester me about why the six decades from being born me did not make your job easier by taking a time machine into the future to pick out what would be standard size window openings in 2005?

MIAMI CONTRACTOR BLUES PART 1

(not our crawl space, just a gruesome photo I found online)

THE CRAWL SPACE

The handyman crawls into our godawful crawl space, where perhaps urban rats and roaches dwell in humidity bathed with pinhole leaking pipes.

Nearly 100-year-old pipes that also provide food in the form of kitchen grease ground up in the Insinkerator then served up via the cracked cast iron route to the main sanitary line.

So he says, after we summoned him telling him we’re pretty confident the ancient pipes are slowly leaking "you have some vermin down there.”

“Do you know every time you rinse the dishes, some of that crud feeds them? 

“And why, in the middle of the crawl space, is there some poured cement?”

“I mean, it looks like it's 60 years old, but…”

Wow.

Okay, I don't get enough exercise, but I'm pretty sure I don't look 60.

And since no one is a homeowner before being about 20, I'd have to been flippin’ 80 to have been the one who asked for some cement to be poured where just old dirt is supposed to be. 

So why on earth would you be asking me?

And since I told you when I made this appointment that I don't do work on the house, just why would I have crawled through the fat man's squeeze of a crawl space opening and waded through vermin droppings, to dump some concrete under my old house?

Am I the only one who gets asked so many stupid questions?