Contractors, Contractors, Contractors

The best thing about doing it yourself, is not having to deal with @#$%^@!#$ contractors! But, from time to time, I find a job that I just don't want to deal with. Two cases in point being the installation of a shower door, and the sprinkler system.

I've been having trouble getting someone to come and install the shower door. The door we ordered from George Morlan arrived last week, but the installer that they recommended (Southwest Washington Glass) has not returned my calls. I was thinking it would be wise to have an experienced (and recommended) installer do the job and make sure the heavy glass door is installed correctly and is water tight. But, I have called them twice over the past 2 weeks without getting a response. So, I called George Morlan again and asked them to recommend someone else. They would not. Ugh! So, I told them about all of the trouble I was having trying to schedule an installation. The guy I talked to agreed to call the installer himself, but I never heard back from him. Finally, this afternoon, I called George Morlan back again, talked to the same guy, told him I was seriously thinking about canceling my order, blah, blah blah. Well, I finally got a call from the installer (the actual guy, not his receptionist). He took down on my information and said he’d call back with an installation time. He didn't. So, I'll have to try and call him again tomorrow. Once again, I'm at the mercy of a contractor. Grr, Grrr, Grrr, Grrr!

Oh something else funny, speaking of contractors. I went home for lunch today, when I saw someone drive up and take a look at the sprinkler system. He said he was the "backflow inspector". The landscaper had left a message last week saying something strange about the backflow inspection not going well, but I didn't really understand it. Today, the backflow guy said they buried the connection so low that it made it hard to test. It wasn'’t a code violation, just made testing harder. I didn't ask why he couldn't complete the inspection last week, but he could this week. I may never know.

To be fair to the landscaper, everything else has gone smoothly. Now that the city has signed off on the backflow inspection, we should have our final walkthough with the landscaper. Hopefully we'll get a good lesson on operating controller, which looks more complicated than my laptop computer. Also, the rock wall turned out great, but I don't have a decent picture to post yet. Next time.