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I am a wife of a contractor — 3-partner operation specializing in light business construction and home remodeling/new construction. Have read Fine Homebuilding for years as does my husband. Are there wives of contractors that visit this site? If so, can you answer my question? HOW THE HECK DO I GET MY HUSBAND TO FINISH MY HOUSE??? We built a 2200 sq. ft. house 6 years ago. He did a great job, however it is lacking a few things — namely all the trim and finished staircase/handrail and cupboard doors (he build all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms.) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had phone calls telling me he’s finished up another kitchen and it’s beautiful — and it probably is — he does great work. But to finish ours …. and before you guys groan, we have a membership in at a local golf, we ski in the winter, he plays basketball. I don’t expect him or want him to stop. I just want my trim finished. Any ideas short of hiring someone else??
And to the contractors out there, one more question. How do you get the deadbeats to pay up?? We have one client, a self-employed electrical contractor, that owes us quite a bit of money for a kitchen addition done last year (don’t get me going on that!!). We’ve sent invoices, letters, etc. Short of stealing his expensive imported dog, we’ve tried almost everything — court next? Thanks for any help!
The Wife
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If I told you how to get him to finish up those projects then all our wives would know how to get us to do the same. I couldn't take such a chance.
As for the deadbeat, time to litigate. Sometimes just a mean word or two from an attorney helps. If you get a judgement then you are at liberty to seize the necessary assets of his to satisfy the debt. I would also put a lien on his property where you did the work. Now, depending on how long this has been may affect what recourse you do have. I am in Ohio and laws differ state by state. Ohio also has a nice law that allows us to (in the event of non-payment of contract breach) seek recovery for the actual value of the job as opposed to the contract price. The reasoning here is that once the customer voided the contract terms by nonpay then you no longer need to honor any low or special pricing.
Good luck.
You could always go to homer depot and get a "how to build cabinets" book and tackle it yourself.
Pete
*Uh, you wouldn't happen to be my wife, would you?
*this sounds like de je vu....we lost a post a bit like this in the great crash, however the answer is simple. All houses built by us husbands are completed minutes prior to selling. Just put your house on the market.
*In reply to 'wife' from another 'wife', don't sew the buttons back on their work gear . One door put on gets one button and so on....and... what about all the clutter that ends up on the kitchen bench e.g. drill bits, tapes, etc...just see the reaction if we cluttered up the shed benches!!!Susan Cadioli
*that'll teach you to play with my computer..
*Susan, are you endeavoring to start a new line of work for poor ol' Mark? Half-naked contracting? Seems like the plot of many a lady's fantasy... poor fellow could catch his death! One other thing... that "clutter" on the table is our underappreciated form of "decor". Some people adorn the house with motifs, collectables, souvenirs, etc... we prefer the "work-in-progress" look.(Gives support to the "it's not finished - yet" appearance of the rest of the place.
*I can't even get it up to finish our house now that I think it is going to be on the market. I btter not sell it to another contractor or it will NEVER get done.
*Susan, You mean you will actually do mending? You are a catch. I have pants waiting on mending 6 months and more till I just buy new.The tools on your kitchen bench will be highly prized as family room decor by yuppies 100 years from now who won't have the foggiest notion of their operation.
*Hold on now. This is a two way street. I'm in this business, so of course, as is to be expected, the house isn't done or anywhere near. BUT my wife makes costumes for a living, and being handy around a sewing machine, I guess that explains why I have two pairs of jeans with half respectable crotches in them (one of them is my going to town jeans too), the rest of them look like some male strippers rig. I have discovered this cool glue, though , called 'Speed Sew' so I can make some emergency repairs on my own behalf.
*My wife says there's a business called "Rent A Husband". For an hourly rate they complete the little jobs your husband hasn't finished.
*Dear Wife,I don't speak as a contractors wife, but I can solve your dilemma. Having no patience to wait, I would simply get out the miter box, nails, hammer and turn on the saw myself. Make sure that you ask your husband what kind of wood to buy, (this way he'll know what you're up to)......and go for it!! If he's a perfectionist like the gentlemen here seem to be, it won't be long before he chimes in with, "No, no, no.... that's not how it's done.....here let me do that, honey!!" I'd give it an hour max. ;-)Now if this backfires, but I don't think it will, then you are on your own,sadly enough. So read and learn here, and get the trim going yourself. I have!Beatrix
*Bea, it's working then... first we try the "Gee Honey this is fun..." (Tom Sawyer approach). When that didn't work, we resorted to the "Huh?" (Standard "Guy" answer) It always works... even when we don't!
*Gome on Mark,Two beautiful girls like that in your life and you've got time to play on the internet.Shame on you.Gabe
*About 15 years ago I gave my wife a new master bath for Christmas. The contractor did everything except the granite walls and floors. I was a stone contractor and could have never afforded that type of finish if I weren't. I put the mud bed in for the floor, wire lathed-scratched and browned the walls and kind of got busy so could not "get around tuit" for the next 5 years.She just kept bugging me and bugging me about it for the first couple of years. She laid off of me for a year or two and I figured I was "out of the woods". I came back from a rather lengthy out of state job and was shocked to see the bathroom DONE! I asked her who did it and she just refused to tell me. Bugged the hell out of me. She just said not to worry about it and to consider it an early gift from Santa.The next week I stopped in to pick up an order at my local stone supplier and what do I see above the service counter? A blown-up framed copy of a check drawn on my business account made out to my fiercest competitor. And right below it was an 8 x 10 picture of our master bath. On the memo portion of the check my wife had written very boldly: THANKS FOR A GREAT JOB!!!
*Wow...how do you spellb a-l-i-m-o-n-y?? These women are far, far too patient. Six years without trim or five without a finished bathroom wall or floor? That's living in a construction site--reason six hundred and fifty four for why I'll never build a new house!:-) Way too much unfinished business for my liking.George- "huh" works both ways you know!Beatrix
* Beatrix,
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joseph,Just name it and I'll see what I can do!Beatrix
* Beatrix,
*Joseph,I thought that we're talking about your unfinished business. I finished my flagstone walkway yesterday, it looks great. Any opinions on that?Beatrix
* Beatrix,
*Joseph,We are the choices that we make, I chose flagstone! Nothing is too tough when you really try. What's that saying, "If at first you don't succeed......"? I'm not afraid of a little work. Yes...I did it myself and would recommend it highly. Beatrix
* Beatrix,
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joe, six or so flame wars ago... Bea was knee deep in the "Big Old House Insanity" thread... she's "one of the... er... guys" by now. The question of how she got here is valid tho...
*Wife,I don't know how many people this will work for, but my wife got her deck by putting it on her birthday list.It was finished 10 days after her birthday (of course it is only 8'x10')!Rich Beckman
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Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joseph,That depends on your definition of "new". I've been here for almost a year. It was a great friend of mine, he's in "the business" too, who told me about this site.Beatrix
*Hey Joseph,Speaking of unfinished business, I've visited your website a few times, and it needs a bit of help. It's quite hard to read right now.....I think that you need an editor....Beatrix
* Beatrix
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joseph,I'm just curious....why do you have an ICQ # with your name? Do you use it much?Beatrix
* Beatrix
*Joseph...and I bet, from what I've seen of your postings here, that you have some incredibly interesting dialogs!Beatrix
* Beatrix,
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joseph,My computer doesn't seem to be working right tonight, either, hopefully I'll have it in order by the end of the weekend.Beatrix
* Beatrix,
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Joseph,Luckily it doesn't happen often. Where would we be without modern technology anyway?Beatrix
*Joseph,One final thought for the night....."nostalgia just isn't what it used to be", don't you agree?Beatrix
* Beatrix,
Joseph Fusco View Image
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The best thing to do is hire a contractor to come in and finish the job. your husband may huff, but he really cannot say anything (after all, you gave him 6 years plus to finish the job).
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It should be very simple....
Go the the library. Check out a copy of the Greek play "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes. Follow the example of the main character and you should get the punch list done in short order.
*Ouch!!!
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From one wife to another...
We finally moved into the new house... eleven years after starting it. Prior to that, we lived in the one room shop we built 15 years ago. No real answer to how to get the process moving faster. I threatened to move in before anything was done if I had to wait much longer. Well the doors are up, some of them have locksets, forget trim for awhile, the next thing on my agenda is bathroom sinks. At least the kitchen cabinets are done and almost all the drawers have fronts! Of course the long awaited 'real shop' still has a huge pile of my son's toys in the middle of it. Life goes on, hang in there!
Marty
*You can't get your husband to finish, I can't get mine to start! We bought an an older home (built 1925) to fix up & resell. The plan was to update the bath (still has the original clawfoot tub) & kitchen, maybe add a second bath, rewire, repair/replace the windows,refinish the wood floors,kind of bring the place up to date, sell it & move on to another. Figured we could do that in about 5 yrs. Well, it's 5 1/2 yrs later & we haven't started. Seems we can't seem to agree on what is to be done, let alone what is to be done first. In the meantime, as is my nature, I have filled the place up w/ "stuff", you know, furniture, etc & now we can't start because there's too much "stuff" in the way. Good thing I like my neighbors & neighborhood, 'cuz it looks as if we're going to be here for a while. By the way, my spouse just left to finish up an addition for someone else & said he couldn't believe that he was going to work & leaving me on this website *and* with his new issue of FH.
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Two elderly widows were having tea, when one noted that the thing she missed most about being widowed was not having sex. The other replied that she wouldn't know ... she was still a virgin.
"But you were married three times!", her friend exclaimed. "How could you have three husbands and never have had sex?"
The other replied: "My first husband was a philosopher, and all he wanted to do was think about it. My second husband was a gynocologist, and all he wanted to do was study it. My last husband was a contractor, and he just kept saying he'd get around to it next week!"
*This is Ruth Grindinger, Lee's wife. Lee does beautiful work and I am the proud owner of the largest single collection of his furniture in the world. Do we have unfinished projects? You bet. That's what makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning. Lee single handedly built us a beautiful house, that would easily have cost us $100,000 more than we could ever come up with! I'm a Respiratory Therapist, which means I have a job with health insurance and a paycheck every two weeks, which certainly helps smooth out the bumps in the self employed department, but I could never afford the gorgeous place I live in. For about the first six months we moved into this place, I thought I was house sitting for some rich people who were going to come home any day and kick us out! Yeh, it's been a year and a half and we still have some trim missing and some cabinet doors to go, but I still have unfinished curtains in my sewing room, wistfully waiting to be customized to our windows. I say "Put it in perspective! Appreciate what you have!" And yes, if you really want it done this year, list it with the real estate folks-that is the only way that has ever worked for us!
*BTW George,That wasn't a flame war, to me it was a passionate debate by people with strong beliefs. We all need to learn more from each other. That's what we're here for, isn't it?Beatrix
*I am memorizing that joke. For my portfolio ....Thank you
*LOL............ I'm going to steal that one.........
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this sounds so familiar. My hsuband is also a builder and our house is unfinished, he says it will be finished when he retires. I too get phone calls or meet people who tell me how they were so happy to have my hsuband do the work and the job is beautiful. I love my house and it is safe and warm. I guess Ill never see the trim work done, but at least the family sees him un-like some of his hammerin buds.
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Bea, agreed on the BOHN thread... it was the subsequent... excursions, on other topics.
*What you should do is tell him (I'm assuming this is a guy problem) you'll just do the work yourself. Try to be real messy -- just throw the level away, you won't need it. He will eventually intervene and finish the work properly, either out of horror at the waste of material or concern that visitors will think he did it.There. Now the women have to offer advice on manipulating THEIR species. Fair?
*I shrunk one of the wife's sweaters in the washing machine beyond belief. It worked for a few years. Now I help with laundry by choice. I swear she's slowly shrinking these pants, they just seem to be getting snugger around the waist.........Lee
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Although my husband is not a contractor, both of us have done quite a bit of remodeling work on our house. My husband only likes to do the big exciting projects, and gets bored with easy or repetitive tasks. I agree with Andrew B. in part, what has worked for me is to do the work that I can handle by myself, but to make sure that I do a good job, and also make sure that all our friends and associates know that I was the one who did the work. The other thing that has worked for me is to get up before he does on a weekend morning and just start working on the project. He usually gets up and takes over doing it himself, and doesn't take the time to make excuses or get diverted to doing something else.(if you choose this, also have an easy breakfast available so he doesn't have the excuse to quit before at least some of the work is done)Good luck! and if you find solutions that work, you might want to post it on a wives support message board!
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I wonder if building a home together and realizing how much work it takes might not help people grow together as well. If one person grinds out the money, and another considers the main job to be picking out the right colors, etc. and waiting for the appropriate subs to show both the home and effort might seem less than they otherwise would be. My mother and father remodeled their own home, sat on nail kegs (yes, nails did come in neat barrels at one time) and were married 62 years before my father passed on. Mom still jokes about the kegs to this day - the only thing she disliked was all the dirt.
For what it is worth,
Dennis
*Ok Ladies this is how it works for me. First read the schedule of work. Then add your job into the list. Or if that fails drop larger hints. A 20 pound sledge hammer from the roof, get the idea? I think that being married to a builder is NEVER having your house finished. Or living in the middle of several " work in progress ". For all the people who remember about my front steps I now have a pile of stone and slate in the back yard. (Two years and waiting for steps)Diane Curry "The wife of the guy who does really great work"
*ok now I know what the wife was up to while I was on the phone. What she isn't telling is about the new cabinets i build in the kitchen, or the new doors for the upstairs or the closet space saver and the new ceder lining she wanted......................... Tell you what dear if you finish that accounting software I'll finish the steps....:)
*My wife got tired of seeing the new kitchens I was doing for other people [ in my defense they were paying me ] and had been after me to start her kitchen for quite a while . So one Sunday morning a buddy came by on his way to the lake to try out his boat after working on it and I went with him . I guess that was the last straw because when I got home three hours later we turned the corner half a block from my house just in time to see her tip a thirty gallon trash can into the back of my truck .As the dust boiled up my buddy said " what the hell is that " ? I said if I didnt know better I'd say it was plaster and lathe . Turned out I didnt know better . I'm just glad I got home when I did , she was about to take her sledge hammer to those newley exposed load bearing studs .Needless to say I got right on that new kitchen and had it finished in only eight or nine months LOL . Chuck
*Sooooo!Your wife must be doing my washing too!!
*I like Wendy's thinking, and my note was tongue-in-cheek. The point is to recognize the real reason these easy (read: boring) tasks don't get done -- it's not indifference to your needs, just that the last thing you want to do when you're not working is work. Carrots (and consideration) are better than sticks -- doesn't mean you have to live with a rough bathroom floor for 5 years (ouch).I have at least six projects at home that are "almost" finished. And 2 more that I really have to start very very soon... Sigh.
*Andrew. . . must be a small house.-pm
*Yes! 1600 sf, 1/8 acre, but growing.
*Honey,I told you never to post here, your embarrassing me. I'll finish it the next time it rains. I promise.
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I am a wife of a contractor -- 3-partner operation specializing in light business construction and home remodeling/new construction. Have read Fine Homebuilding for years as does my husband. Are there wives of contractors that visit this site? If so, can you answer my question? HOW THE HECK DO I GET MY HUSBAND TO FINISH MY HOUSE??? We built a 2200 sq. ft. house 6 years ago. He did a great job, however it is lacking a few things -- namely all the trim and finished staircase/handrail and cupboard doors (he build all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms.) I can't tell you how many times I've had phone calls telling me he's finished up another kitchen and it's beautiful -- and it probably is -- he does great work. But to finish ours .... and before you guys groan, we have a membership in at a local golf, we ski in the winter, he plays basketball. I don't expect him or want him to stop. I just want my trim finished. Any ideas short of hiring someone else??
And to the contractors out there, one more question. How do you get the deadbeats to pay up?? We have one client, a self-employed electrical contractor, that owes us quite a bit of money for a kitchen addition done last year (don't get me going on that!!). We've sent invoices, letters, etc. Short of stealing his expensive imported dog, we've tried almost everything -- court next? Thanks for any help!
The Wife