Sticking out a shaker door
@resto: in her defense, she has not made it my problem and has offered to pay me to rip it out and start anew if i felt that was the best course of action but i really don’t hang crown anymore and have not in over 10 years (for those reading this, i still do door casements because i only work on doors). i consider crown to be menial work at this point and would rather stick out urbandads doors. i am weighing everything here though including considering that the parking is pretty easy on her street.
so the others see this:
i do not get as mad at the customers in this situation as i do with the contractors who do things like this. like with the two itinerants (fly by nights, gypsies, travelers, knackers; whatever offensive name we might want to call them) who charged a customer $1600 to perform a 4 hour caulking job and they did not even do it right. people like this give us all a bad name and make people suspicious and when these contractors low ball (underbid), we always have to justify our prices against their crappy work and unprofessionalism without knoc king the competition which would sound unprofessional.
urbandad, i am sorry i stole your post but it felt like an appropriate time to say it. there is stuff that has to be said that many people do not realize, especially when dealing with contractors.
andriywww1990
in General Discussion 4 years and 3 months ago
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30 replies
JohnHancock | 4 years and 3 months ago
Lol
stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago
@restoration: what you say is true but at least he did not have these people running to his house wasting valuable time; he spoke to them on the phone.
my neighbors are job shoppers. for the smallest jobs. even when they saw the plastic fence a few doors down that they liked and got a good reference for the contractor, they had to go and call 5 fence companies. i watched this unfold, they drag the contractors here wasting their time, and gas and dumping carbons in the atmosphere for what? to save $50 on a 20’x30 fence? in the end they went with the company who did the job a few doors down. the moral here: find someone you like who has a good reputation and go with it.
there is a time to job shop. if the job is big. if you had no good contractor leads and pulled someone out of the phone book/off the web blind. if something someone says does not sound right. or if you got two prices and they are miles apart and you need a third to judge. but in truth, most legitimate and honest contractors – and this is more true with trades like plumbers a nd electricians because of the cost of their insurance – have little wiggle room in their quotes. if a price is low, something is off; the contractor is doing something wrong and he is not taking food off his table – so its not his family getting short changed, it is the customer.
that said, urbandad was right to make a couple calls and experience will tell him where to go first the more he does this. i could bet he first called a big shop which might follow the laws to a t and that costs money. so he called some smaller people and found they could do it for less. he might find that the people who do it less don’t change the saw blades as often as they should (for a job like his, put a new blade on the saw).
whatever job shoppers do, only call legally operating and licensed people. the more a contractor exposes him or herself, the more scrutiny they are under from the public and government agencies, and the less likely that we are contributing to abuse of employees and trash dumped on the side of the highway and enabling people who might go as far as to commit outright fraud.
hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago
I just want to say, this is not about shopping a job like crazy until someone underbids it. I’m learning about the best way to get this work done, and I’m looking at different ways to do the fabrication. Different shops have different setups, and different labor costs. But once I identify the right shop to do this type of work, I’d like to build a relationship and use them again. Yes if it were a one off situation, I would probably just tool up and cut the trim myself. There’s a lot of work I can do myself, but I don’t want to do everything myself, it would take too long. It makes a lot more sense to have a shop make moulding than to do it on side, and I think using a picture framer to miter them is a neat solution.
Now on the paint topic, I’ve been experimenting with the newish Scuff-x paint from Benjamin Moore, and I’m liking it a lot so far. It’s a single component waterborne paint, that’s really easy to work with, and appears to resist scuffs and allow aggressive scrubbing out of scuff. I’m thinking for the interior doors, this could be a nice feature. I can’t see t he difference from the regal or aura lines in color or texture, but perhaps others could.
@stevecym, painting latex over oil should be possible, with appropriate prep, but in this case why do it? I think we both know the answer. If I were having a door painted, I would certainly specify the paint to use and the prep I wanted. I’m having something painted now, and I bought the materials ahead so the painter just has to show up and do the job. If I bought the wrong paint, that’s on me, so it’s one less thing he needs to worry about. But I do understand that many people who have never held a tool will shop a job to they hear a rock bottom price, and they get results to match.
hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago
@stevecym, I just thought of a possible idea for your on your client’s paint issue. Most waterborne paints will dissolve in alcohol even after curing, but oil based paints won’t. You might be able to take some denatured alcohol, and a scotchbrite pad or similar, and just scrub it off. I’ve done this before, but not on something as large as a door.
stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago
Thank you urbandad. I was beginning to think about what might remove it without disturbing the oil. I will call fine again and run this by them or will bring alcohol with me – if i even decide to get involved.
hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago
@stevecym, if I were in your shoes, I would bid the job as a full strip and repaint, and if you can use a trick to knock it back to the oil, you can either give her a little break or keep the difference, but I think the contractor who painted latex over oil should be taking part of the hit. If he’d agree to reinstall, it might be a better bet to just run new trim and price that out than to deal with stripping it, but I don’t know how much there is or how big it is.
Interestingly, we’ve discussed before that I’m still a fan of oil based polyurethane on floors compared to waterborne. I’m a holdout there I guess, although I’m about to try a new product that I’m super excited about, a hardwax oil! More on that after I put some down.
However, when it comes to paints, I’m more inclined to use Latex/waterborne. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with oil paints, and fine paints of europe makes some of the best. But paint is easier to touch up than poly, and latex paint on wood is probably a little more durable due to it’s flexibility, so I’d rather just go to a ben moore dealer and get a match than have to order fresh oil paint and endure the fumes every couple years. It doesn’t look quite the same as oil paint, but personally I think it’s looks equally good unless you’re going for a very specific finish.
stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago
do you want to hear the rest of the story? it gets better. she was supposed to have me come back; i think i have said that. the other guy sells her on having him do the paint and SHE orders the paint. she tells me the job she did has weird streaks in it. so i ask for the bill of sale from Fine and what else did she order? Mineral spirits. with water bourne paint? i am wondering if the contractor cut the waterbourne paint with mineral spirits.
hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago
Would be hard to thin water base with mineral spirits and not notice something was wrong, perhaps they bought if for cleanup. I’ve never tried cleaning up waterbase with mineral spirits, so I don’t know what that would look like. Either way, it wouldn’t really change the remediation process.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
urbandad:
its steve with a new screen name.
a professional would not even attempt it or think about it.
when i was five years old, i was given a hand-me-down pedal go cart that had my uncle’s name on the panel behind the seat. i did not want people thinking that was my name so i opened a can of paint – after my mother told me NOT to do it – and I painted over the name. to my horror, i got some paint on my jacket. i went into the bathroom and tried washing the oil base paint off with water. my mother caught me and that was when i learned that there are oil base paints and water base paints and that you cannot mix the two. i never forgot that lesson and it was not a pleasant one.
restorationcontractor | 4 years and 3 months ago
Hey Steve, sounds like a pain it the ass job to fix someone else’s screw up. You’re too nice, I know, I fall into the same habit. Customer hired another contractor who screwed up how does it become your problem? Is your time worth any less than your customers. You always talk about the value of craftsmen, follow your own advise. If you are going to help her and fix it, charge her for it!
Urbandad sorry to hijack your thread!