Remodel Hell -- Top 5 List #3 and #4

And so it continues, the remodel of our house. The 4 to 6 month remodel that is officially going on a year. The remodel where the contractor shows up for two hours and then disappears. The remodel with the ADHD contractor.

His typical day: Caulk half of the baseboards, then move on to doing a quarter of the bathroom floor, take a little break to put up a couple of shingles, meander over to the kitchen to pretend to finally fix the outlets, wander out to the front yard and pretend to analyze how to put up the rest of the shingles tomorrow or the next day or never. Oh, is it already noon? Time to go to Home Depot for some more caulk. Gone 5 hours? Oh, well he forgot, he had to go talk to his son's school. Time to paint half of a wall now. Go move around all of the debris in the backyard into a different configuration of piles. Unplug the washer and dryer again just to piss me off. Plug in very loud radio tuned into favorite Tejano station. Do two hours of real work. Ask for an astronomical amount of money and call it a day.

I wish I was exaggerating. I am not.

Now you may think our remodel is more costly and lengthy because we changed our minds a lot and upgraded things. Sooo not true, and I have the IKEA kitchen cabinets to prove it. Right next to the ebay kitchen faucet. So it is not us. It. is. him.

So in honor of this lying prickhead, here are not one but TWO top 5 lists for the collection.

Top 5 Lies My contractor Told Me

5. Your house will be finished by Easter.
4. Your house will be finished by Fourth of July.
3. Your house will be finished by Labor Day.
2. Your house will be finished by Thanksgiving.
1. Your house will be finished by me.

I know this last one is officially a lie because I am planning on killing him next time I see him. ( Just in case anyone reads this and goes to the cops -- like anyone actually reads this blog! -- I am kidding. Though I would like to torture him in some purely psychological but legal and ethical way.)


And the next Top 5 list....

Top 5 Things I Will Not Miss About Remodeling

5. Not being able to be naked in my own house (see archive "good morning sunshine" for details)
4. Writing checks weekly that contain the word "thousand."
3. Going to Home Depot. Isn't that place one of the levels of Dante's Inferno?
2. The dust. My poor kids sound like 90 year-old smokers hacking up all of that crap, as do I. And I am only 29, by the way, and NOT a smoker, so it is definitely the dust.
1. Construction workers using my bathroom. There are not enough matches in the world to burn THAT smell out of a room. What in the bejesus are those guys eating to be able to produce defecation like that? If it smelled like that every time I went to the bathroom, I would be at a gastrointestinal doctor, and pronto. And don't even get me started on how much Pine Sol and bleach I have used in there, while vomitting, by the way. Did I mention the skid marks in the toilet? Gnarly shit, literally.