How Drywall Can Organize Your Toys

Have I ever mentioned that our contractor bailed on us a few months ago? Well, he did. So we have been taking a break from remodeling our house in order to find someone qualified to finish the job. We finally found someone who, unlike the last guy, is actually, oh what's the word, ... COMPETENT. The last guy was horrendous. He never showed, he made a rat's nest out of our backyard and garage, he damaged our NEW tub and our NEW shower, he did all kinds of crap just straight up wrong (like the plumbing) and he was a pathological liar to boot. Literally -- that is not an exaggeration. For instance, when he started coming only a few hours a day, I started logging his hours. When he asked to get paid, I gave him the old "I don't THINK so" speech. Because getting paid for 40 hours of work when he was only there for 10 hours seemed like a bit of a stretch. He was PISSED.

Then he started crying and told me that the reason that he wasn't coming was that his wife was divorcing him because she thought he spent too much time working on our house. Heart-wrenching, isn't it? Or at least it would have been if I had not known that he told the LAST person that he worked for that his wife was divorcing him for THAT job! Then there is The Back Door. Our back door that he "ordered" in April was still not there by October. He went to the door company "every week" for the entire six months and "spoke to the manager." Obviously we had paid him for the door back in April. SO we finally called the door place and they had no clue who he was! Or who we were! Nor did they have ANY record of that type of door being ordered! Bastard. So we decided that it was not worth a fight -- we just wanted him to finish the fucking job, already -- so we just told him that apparently the door company lost the door, but they had the exact one we needed in stock, so go there RIGHT NOW with this money and get it. So he did, but the stupid bastard thought that we really bought his lie, so he had the nerve the VERY NEXT DAY to tell me that our door we ordered in April came in, but that they would not refund him. I nearly clocked him right there. Looking back, I should have, but at the time we still thought he could actually finish the job and we knew how hard it would be to find a replacement, so we let it slide.

BUT when he gave me the old "wife divorcing me" speech right before he quit, he mentioned the door again!!! This time, he said that we were so selfish and greedy and that he had to install it in his own house since he could not return it. Oh, and he still had the paperwork, too. I was DONE at that point. I said in my least nice voice ever that I would LOVE to see pictures of that door, and I would really love to see the papers. He cried and said that it was not right that I would make him do that, that I should just trust him. Holy hell was he an ass. He showed up for a few days after that and then we never saw him again.

The thing is, everyone talks about how bad remodeling is, so everything he did we just wrote off to a typical remodeling experience. But now that this new guy is here, we see just how bad the first guy was. Looking back, we should have fired him the first week. Sure the new guy doesn't show sometimes and stuff like that, but it is NOTHING compared to the old guy. He said he would build a gate, and he built it! He said he would clean out the hell-hole of a garage that the first guy left, and I nearly passed out when I saw how empty the garage was after he worked for only one day! We were so, so blind.

I think it is like my post-partum recovery with Henry. I had some internal scarring that I didn't know about and the prenatal vitamins were messing with my digestion something fierce, so I was in a LOT of pain. I had to take 800 mg of ibuprofen every 6 hours to avoid passing out. But since everyone always says that recovery is hard, I just assumed my pain was normal. Then they found the scar tissue that was causing my massive cramping, and I realized --- warning, this is gross -- that me having to bite my fist so as not to scream when doing #2's and bleeding out my ass was caused by the vitamins. So then all was well. My recovery with Quinn was a cinch. If I had had that experience first, I would have known instantly after having Henry that something was very wrong. Just like the remodel. You need to know what "normal" is in order to recognize when something is not.

But back to the title of this post. The new guy says he is drywalling the damaged walls (caused by the old guy) this week, and I believe him! So we had to clear out the entire Toy Room. I took this as an opportunity to get rid of every crap ass toy that we have. Anything that was slightly broken, that got on my nerves, that the boys never played with, or that I had some other ill will toward, I put in the alley. There were five large bags of toys sitting out there by the time I was done. They were gone the next day.* We are now down to only a few toys that they boys actually play with and enjoy (which should be how it was to begin with, but we all know that you can't make it through bdays and xmas without friends and relatives piling on the junk. Plus I have made some bad purchases myself.)

* That is one of the perks to living near Mexico, by the way. Putting Stuff In Alley = Instant Charitable Donation To Family In Mexico.

And the Toy Room is clean. This may all have been worth it just for that!