As most people will tell you, any home remodeling job is a long and endless process. I recently had to have my kitchen floor replaced due to a leaky refrigerator and this is how it went:

Step 1 – Choose a general contractor to replace the floor.

Step 2 – Contractor comes, measures house with a laser beam, and walks around looking and nodding. Great, at last we are getting some place.

Step 3 – They will find flooring to match what I have now. Only a small area was actually damaged.

Step 4 – The place where I bought the original floor doesn’t have it in stock. I guess the floor will not be done as quickly as I thought.

Step 5 -They can’t find a match, but know of another place that might have it.  Why didn’t they look there in the first place?

Step 6 – They found some almost exactly like I have – almost. The entire floor of the kitchen, dining area, and living room will have to be replaced. The cost will only be 10 times as much as the original estimate. They will call my insurance company with the good news.

Step 7 – They cannot purchase the wood until the contract is signed. (Translation: They will not order the wood until the check for the down payment is signed.)

Step 8 – Good news. The wood is on order. Bad news: It is not in stock and will have to be back ordered. Why am I not surprised?

Step 9 – The wood is not in yet. Did they have to chop down the trees and float logs from South America?

Step 10 – The wood is here. They cannot trust the seller’s delivery service as they dumped and ruined an entire load on another job. I didn’t really want to know that.

Step 11 – The wood is finally delivered. I have boxes of wood all over the house, in the kitchen, in the living room, in the hall. We are climbing over and around boxes, but it won’t be much longer.

Step 12 – They cannot install the floor as the wood has to acclimate, whatever that is. The house is like a Brazilian rain forest. The cats climb and jump on the boxes playing king of the jungle.

Step 13 – The sub-contractor who will do the installation comes to walk around looking and nodding. It apparently takes a village to install a floor. He forgot to bring his tape measure, but will use the measurements of the general contractor.

Step 14 – The sub-contractor is coming at last to install the floor. The general contractor assures me it is worth waiting to get it done right.

Step 15 – The sub-contractor comes and walks around looking and nodding, then leaves one young worker who does not speak English.  After a few hours, he injures himself and is bleeding. I call the general contractor who calls the sub-contractor who calls me, who passes the phone to the worker. 

Step 16 – My house is full of big men in big boots walking around, speaking in a foreign language, running extension cords, sawing, moving furniture, hammering, stapling, carrying boards, throwing scraps out the back door. We can’t get inside our own house due to the commotion – but at last they are working on it.

Step 17 – Good news, the floor is almost done – almost. They ran out of wood.  The general contractor will order more. Here we go again. The phone isn’t working, no internet, not to mention an uncompleted job on the floor.

Step 18 – The men come and move the furniture back – sort of – and clean up the sawdust – sort of. Things begin to get back to normal – sort of.

All I have to do now is wait for the rest of the wood to arrive, be delivered, acclimated, and be installed. Things seem hopeful – until my daughter walks into the kitchen and finds the dishwasher leaking.

Copyright 2013 Sheila Moss