Friday, January 12, 2007

I'm fixing up the place

The last few days a contractor has been over here starting my home remodeling. The first step in this project is replacing all 14 of the interior hollow core doors. Yes, 14 doors! They are also replacing the front door.

My house was built in 1953. In this area they used steel door frames on all of the interior doors. They cannot be removed without taking up the oak floors, so each door has to be custom cut to fit the frame.

Guess you know what that means? It means extra labor and in turn ………….MONEY!!!!!!!!

Oh well. I haven’t really spent any money on redecorating this place in the 30 years I’ve lived here, so I figure I ahead no matter what it costs, to a limit of course.

The men doing the work are eastern European. Two guys are originally from Czechoslovakia and the other guy is from Russia. One has been in this country 6 years and the other 7. I’ve never had work done by people from those countries before, but take my advice, if you ever need people to do work around the house, get people that are from the Slavic countries. I couldn’t be more pleased with their work.

The worst part is that the Russian guy does talk on the cell phone a lot, but he paints, as he talks, so no big deal at all. The Czechoslovakian guy does the cutting and fitting. Their lunch breaks take no time at all. They eat and immediately get back to work with no sitting around bull shitting.

The best part is that these guys are perfectionists! The guy paints a door and then comes back to touch it up if it isn’t just right.

Can you fucking believe it?

The other guy has set up the sawhorses and equipment in my driveway. That’s where he does the cutting and sawing so he doesn’t make my house dirty from the sawdust. It’s been in the 30’s here the last few days, but he says he’s not cold. He’s used to a lot colder where he’s from.

I hit the jackpot with these guys. Next is the bathroom.

Here are a few pictures.

These are the old doors I'm replacing. If you look at the door on the left you'll see why.












The new interior doors are are plastic or something. You can see what they look like very well, but I'll take some more pictures when this part of the remodeling is done so you can get a better look.






I'm replacing the front door because the steel door I replaced about 10 years ago is rusting out at the bottom. I've been told it's because i live so close to the water.















This is the new front door. This ones made out of fiberglass so rusting won't be an issue.

8 comments:

CozyMama said...

i love the new front door, I miss being able to do that kind of stuff. hey got a pic up of me today!! ;)

Anonymous said...

Dude! That totally rocks. And it's money well spent, especially if you ever end up selling the house. I'll keep that in mind about the Slavs too. YOU ROCK TONY! Have a good weekend man.
TG

lime said...

it's a great feeling when you hire really good people. and i am like you, i'll talk up a good worker to my friends as well. likewise, if i am unhappy with a job done i will tell people that too. it's too expensive to pay for materials and labor and have a shitty job done by lazy people.

Monogram Queen said...

Wow I love that front door too. I will reccomend a good worker too and talk shit about a bad one! Best of luck and may it not cost you too much $$$ Have a WONDERFUL week-end Hon!

Anonymous said...

this is REALLY cool, tony!! it may be a little pain in the ass for awhile, but it sounds like it'll be GREAT job!!

Anonymous said...

That's cool Tony.. glad you are getting your house all fixedup and that you found good people to do it!

Anonymous said...

Hey Tony thats the door I was orginally gonna get. The half moon at the top. LOL. Good thing your workers are better than mine were...oh wait thats right mine were american made.

SignGurl said...

I have a similar front door to your old one and it rusted. I don't live by water and have storm door. WTF?

I didn't know they made fiberglass doors. That's cool!