frustration = high anxiety but beauty wins

From the night I walked into my front door in Kentucky farm, my frustration level has been at max. Expectations were high on my way to Kentucky, that the house would be in order....everything was supposedly done except for maybe the arches & definitely the insides of all the windows & doors which I was planning on doing myself. The painter wanted to do that job, but I refused to hire him for that.

The painter told me that the entryway, stairwell, & upstairs hall were already finished...I even paid for that while in California (trusting fool that I was). So excepted everything to be finished. I thought he even said that he did the finishing touches while he was doing the rest of the painting because there were patches & several unfinished places in several of the other rooms. So you can imagine that I thought the house was ready to be moved into.

So when I walked into the house & it was in almost the same shape as when I left, you can imagine my anger, frustration.....& what ever other emotions that could possibly exist hit. Especially after 5 days of driving & then no hot water because the painter had shut off the hot water heated when he epoxied the basement floor. He decided that he shouldn't turn it back on to waste the propane....as if the pilot light & the waterheater sat on vacation would have cost that much in propane. Then calling 5 hotels in the area that wouldn't take me & my dog....after having no problem finding a place to stay while crossing the complete US.....I was not a very happy camper.

A hot shower, one last night's sleep in a bed in a hotel that I finally found that would take me & Leo & now over 2 weeks later & I'm still steaming. Only the steam is building up. I have had a chance to go over the house with a fine tooth comb by this point . It didn't take a fine tooth comb to see that the wall as you enter the house wasn't even painted It's part of the entryway....any fool knows that & it was agreed on. I looked over the painting in the entryway & all the light undercoat was showing through. He said he put 2 coats on....but that had to be BS.....there is no way that 2 coats could miss the same place twice. The place in the dining room where the dry wall had bubbled & I caught before I left was still there patched just as it was the day I left. The bedroom was supposed to have been finished, but when I looked at it, there were streaks of the wrong colour white ceiling paint & the wall paint was showing through the light undercoat (& I wasn't painting it a dark colour either...just a very light green). There was patching next to the door that hadn't been there earlier.....he said he was getting a "wave" out of the wall. Then I looked over the wall & there were dents that hadn't been filled all around the rooms. He had spent so much time "mudding" the walls....why in the world were there any dents even left in the walls????

When I had talked to him on the phone while in California, he complained that he was spending so much more time than he thought, trying to fix the problems in the stairwell (where no one could even see). I told him to focus on what could be seen & not waist time with that. So when I get there, he must have just stopped at that, given it one coat of paint & walked off. Add to that the holes that weren't fully patched on the ceiling where he had put up the smoke/carbon monixide detector in the wrong place. He just decided to put them up while he was painting one day.....not even asking me if it was ok or where I wanted them put. (I would have told him to leave them alone had he asked). He placed the one on the ceiling right under the smoke alarm that was already on the stairwell wall, leaving it there. (where was the thought process in that????)

Last saturday, he came back to so some work. He had been chasing down a rumor that had been started about something he said was wrong with the work the person who installed my windows did.....he said he spent 4 days trying to sit down & talk with everyone to find out where the rumor came from. It was something about the caulking was going to have to be all taken out & redone & I was going to have him do it......I wouldn't have him touch another thing in the house at this point, so where that came from.....anyway...small town crap. So that was his excuse for not coming back to finish up the job. I had put post-it's everywhere that needed work & told him not to touch the arches because I was going to have them re-done by someone who knew what they were doing.....I come back & the holes were patched but still dented......the paint was still see through & he had sanded the arch in the bedroom. Like what part of "don't touch the arches" didn't he hear or understand???? Then to top that off, as he walked out the front door, the door handle broke off in his hand. I had to laugh because it was actually broken before that & just waiting to fall off in someones hand....couldn't have happened to a better person. I really should have forced him to replace it....lol. But I just couldn't be that mean (oh yea).

Monday, when he got here, I had him fix the same things as Saturday....think he noticed????
Well, today, I got a call that he had a migraine & was sick to his stomach. I think it's definitely stress of what he has done with this house & how he doesn't want to be responsible for finishing up the job. I am at the point where I am about to tell him to get lost & not come back.

I met a person the other day in the Walmart parking lot, while I was grumbling about the cart that dented the door of my new truck (yes, the one that offered to light my furnice pilot light). He is actually a very nice person & offered to trade helping me finish fixing my house for the windows that I had in the garage when I bought the house (ones I didn't use when I replaced all the windows) & the interior doors I have already replaced. I think that's a good trade. He needs the windows for an old farm house he is rebuilding & I could sure use the help to get this house finished off in the next week.

They say there is never an end to what can fall apart in a house (or in this case, outside the house). I was cleaning the green out of the bottom of my pool, trying to get it ready for it to be winterized. Come to find out....it wasn't a large leaf in the bottom of the pool, it was a huge tear in the liner. That was right were the shark cleaner crapped out just before I left for Ca in August. It must have gotten hungry & taken a huge bite out of the liner before it died of indigestion. I had purchased a new shark cleaner the day I left, but things weren't working & the painter was trying to "fix" things that he said were broken. Needless to say, there was no point in winterizing the pool. I need a new liner, so draining the pool is what's happening. Wonder how many frogs & swimmie bugs will be in my pool before it gets drained? They say houses are "money pits" & pools just add to the pot.

Even with all of this, I have to say that this is the most wonderful place I have ever lived & when I took a hike on my 10 achers last week it made up for all the frustration with the house. The creek running across the back of the farm, the run-off stream from the neighbors farm runing across the northern side & the hill & huge trees to hike amoung is awsome. There are places for paths & settings for benches throughout the woods. There are springs that come up out of the ground & out of the hill. I do have to do some ground moving because one spring runs right through where I want the barn to be, but that can be fixed easily. There's a fascinating mold on one of the dead trees & moss all over the place. Having this beauty all around me puts the anxiety attacks & frustrations into perspective. Nothing like a hike through the woods in place of valium (or seroquel in my case) to help with an an anxiety attack. Everything will come together & I can fix or get help to fix all the crap that has been done. Nothing can take away the beauty that in right out my back door & that is were all the value is for me. I tried to attach a photo, but too large????

Yikes - sounds like the house is one of those cases of Once one thing goes wrong, everythign goes wrong. But your property sounds beautiful & I'm glad that walking around it relieved your anxiety. Nature does that for me too.

--splitimage

I'm sorry you're having so many problems, right out of the car :-)

"I met a person the other day in the Walmart parking lot;" don't be hiring people you know nothing about to come into your home! It costs nothing to go to the Better Business Bureau online site and check out contractors.

We had our porch, balcony, and deck done and it took 13 months. We checked the contractor and they had a few BBB marks agains them but over a couple years and they weren't "serious" enough and we were having trouble finding someone to do the job at the right price. But we were able to get it done to our liking because we hadn't made the last payment (and the company wasn't "bad" just poorly run/organized).

Oh, I'm not hiring the person I met in the parking lot....to do any work.....he is just an aquaintance now & he just said he would help ME get the job done. I plan on letting the painter "NOT COME BACK" & finish the job myself....but a little help in exchange for the windows & doors wouldn't hurt.

I have to admit that I feel like the anxiety is hitting harder than I had hopped....sometimes I just sit in the chair & sleep to get rid of the stress when I don't walk around the woods.....when that happens, I know the stress is hitting pretty hard. Keep thinking that in my sleep, I will come up with the right answer of how to handle the situation....lol. Sleep can be good for something sometimes.

Trying to find a pain specialist here is adding to my stress. Took my California prescription to the pharmacy.....they filled it but told me I needed to have a KY dr prescribing for them to fill this type of medication (narcotics). I have been calling all over the place & the pain specialists around here only do the steroid injections.....HUH!!!! The pharmacy carries my meds & no one prescribes them???? I have a call into a pain clinic in Lexington but haven't had a call back. This is adding to my stress level right now too. Worse part is when I get this stressed, I start loosing weight & I don't have spare to loose.

Debbie

((((((((((((((( Debbie )))))))))))))))

Can you just get an internal med/regular doc to continue on with your prescription for a bit while you look for the elusive pain center that will do narcotics? Maybe it has to do with Kentucky's PDMP and the management centers want to play it safe. You're not in California anymore :-(

http://www.natlalliance.org/pdfs/Kentucky1.pdf

Lots of places only use narcotics for short-term, after surgery or cancer, etc. not management.

(((eskielover))))

Yep, I hear ya! I'm too out of it to get to home depot to find someone who will price the job the contractor just did wrong, before I pay off the old contractor... with that deducted. He waits and I wait. He doesn't want to wait for the rest of his money, too bad?

Don't let anyone push you into what you know isn't "right." If nothing else, don't decide anything the same day!

Debbie, you can upload your pic to this site and they will resize it. I think the pixel size is 179x200.

ImageMagic Studio

I'd sure like to see that pic!

Just a note to let you know I placed the photos into my gallery (eskielover). They include the woods, the streams, & my new house with it's face lift (new windows, soffits & rain gutters), & the 5 deer that were munching their dinner in my back yard the other night.

I will look into the internet site when I have a chance to figure it out...but through it would at least place them in my gallery.

enjoy the photos,
Debbie