American Foursquare Remodel 6 - Dining Room Ceiling, Part 3

Joe the Handyman's mother-in-law passed away on Thanksgiving weekend. May she rest in peace. But that meant another delay. That sounds cold-hearted. Considering my experience with Gem Plumbing & Heating to date, I was feeling pretty cold-hearted. And cold - the missing ceiling was causing drafts.


Jim and Joe and I met in early December to assess what was needed to fix bad plumbing/construction problems from years ago and to correct the wavy strapping. If I had any doubt that my trust in Joe was misplaced, it evaporated in that meeting. Joe said he removed three ceilings. Lie. He said he always intended to apply shims and a second layer of new strapping over the first layer. Lie (not to mention bad practice). I know he considered his work done when he left my house on November 20th.

Revised plan: jack up the floor joist ends to level them, apply a sister joist, apply new level strapping throughout. No additional cost. (No kidding.)

Here's what I found after the new work on December 9 - an ugly slap-together layered mess... that was only moderately level along the joists, but STILL not level across the joists.

 

  

  

  

Strapping STILL wavy - this is NOT camera lens distortion - the level proved it:

  

The damned strapping was now lower than the original two ceiling layers! What would the measurement be after the sheet rock and plastering? The original spacing between the top of the window casing and the old ceiling was a perfect 9 inches - the exact size of a wallpaper border I already had waiting to be applied. 

NOW, without even considering the new ceiling layer, measurement over one window less than 9 inches. Another measurement was just about 7 1/2 inches. WHAT THE HELL??!!??

  

 

At this point, I also photographed the other damage done during the original ceiling demolition:

 

 

 

Funny how one little thing can really set you off. The fact that my wallpaper border would no longer fit between my ceiling and windows - when it fit perfectly and evenly in October before any construction - was that one little thing that caused me to just explode.

I called Jim - even though it was about 8 at night - and fired Gem Plumbing & Heating on the spot. No more meetings, no more discussions, no more fixes to fix the fixes that weren't working. I'M DONE! And don't even think about billing me for this crappy work.

I would now have to find someone else to remove the abortion of wood nailed to my floor joists and build a new ceiling.

American Foursquare Remodel 5 - Dining Room Ceiling, Part 2

A day or two later, Joe the Handyman (that was how Gem Plumbing & Heating referred to him) filled my house with his voice and presence. He reminded me of my father, or maybe my grandfather (although I can't recall my grandfather speaking English). This older man with a shock of thick white hair had a thick and familiar Azorean accent. I was comfortable with his choppy English and I understood exactly everything he said. He spoke with great authority, what he would do and how it should be done. He even offered tips about other projects I planned. We chit-chatted about the house in Portuguese. It all worked to make me feel confident in his expertise.

But it was now around November 16. Time was becoming a factor: I had to leave my apartment by November 30, the closing was scheduled for Monday, November 23, and the movers were coming on November 25, the day before Thanksgiving. The kitchen floor was a tar paper mess and there were giant construction trash bags and displaced appliances increasing the chaos, waiting for the end of the messy plaster job in the adjoining dining room to finish that job. There was little wiggle room wherein the house would still be empty.

Originally, Joe said he would demolish the old ceilings and apply the strapping in one day, and the plasterer would come in the day after and work his magic; plastering might stretch to 2 days.

OK, three days. Not bad, I guess. I now awaited the cost estimate.

Guy, the salesman project manager from Gem Plumbing & Heating, said Joe could come in on Friday, November 20, and the plasterer would come on Monday and Tuesday. I made it clear that if there were any other delays, work could not be continued until Friday after Thanksgiving at the earliest. Fine with Guy. Then he delivered the news: $4,200 for everything, from the stack pipe work (already finished) to the brand new ceiling.

After I picked up my jaw off the floor, I signed the contract on the night of November 18, and authorized a $2,000 deposit from my bank account.

During online banking on the evening of November 19, I discovered that Gem Plumbing & Heating had withdrawn the entire $4,200 from my checking account. Instantly! Can you say "overdrawn"? I was furious and called Gem Plumbing & Heating immediately, even though I knew it was well after business hours, just to log the mistake.

The next morning, Joe and his assistant arrived at the house bright and early to demolish what looked to me like a perfectly good ceiling - with a huge hole in it. Oh, and Joe let me know that the plasterer would arrive the Monday after Thanksgiving... one week later than expected and after I had moved in. Did Guy know this? We had specifically discussed the timetable. Did he lie to me, knowing he was quitting the company anyway? This was not going well.

I called Gem about the money snafu and the woman said it would be faster for them to write me a check than issue a credit. She would even deliver the check to me at work for the inconvenience, to stem a snowballing bank fee fiasco.

No one ever met me at work that day as promised. This was really not going well with this company.

After work, I went to the house to see what Joe had done. The refund check was sitting on the counter, too late to deposit.

Wait - what the hell was that mess under the bathtub? OMG, the joist had been all but severed by some previous plumber!

 

  

And look at the huge amount of flooring that had been cut out. Was this bathtub even safe? (And why wasn't my ceiling fan removed before the strapping was applied?)

 

Old knob and tube wiring... ran under the bathtub. Copper piping curved elaborately under and around. A two-by-four allegedly reinforced the severed floor joist. Actually, the severed joist edges were almost one inch off level! WHO DID THIS?

Back to the present: the issue of the strapping itself. Not one shim. Not one. The strapping looked wavy even to my naked eye. A test with a large level up on a ladder confirmed the strapping was off in several places.  How was sheet rock supposed to be installed on these roller coaster tracks? 

And there was more. Perfect woodwork around the windows was gouged. Horsehair plaster walls were crumbled at the top, with the missing plaster now causing holes which needed repair under the ceiling line.

Call Gem to get their asses in for another inspection before the plasterer even considered arriving.

Guy told me he was quitting Gem Plumbing & Heating the night I signed the contract. He assured me the new salesman project manager would take good care of me. Jim. Nice guy.

He bore my wrath rather well.

American Foursquare Remodel 4 - Dining Room Ceiling, Part 1

These BEFORE photos of the dining room were taken on October 18, 2009:

Facing east - toward the kitchen

Facing north - the 3-window bay

Facing south, toward the parlor

Facing west, toward the front door

Note the narrow space between the built-in china cabinet and the window on the right.

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On October 30, 2009, I was called at work by a panicked employee of Barrett Floors: there was water gushing into the basement from the second floor bathroom. Toilet. Mind you, I had basically just arrived at work about an hour before the call, after having met them at the house to let them in.

When I arrived back at the house, the two men had already shut off the water main and had the 'flood' under control with the wetvac. Trying to gather my wits, I wondered who the hell I was going to call; I was an apartment dweller for the past 10 years... but here, I was on my own.

I opened the yellow pages and - *POP* - I saw the ad for Gem Plumbing. Of course! I even started to hum their catchy jingle... 8-6-7, 5-3-0-9... Gem Plumbing & Heating spends a gazillion dollars in the Providence radio market. The Gemma sons - owners of the family business - and daughters are active in breast cancer awareness and fund raising since the death of matriarch Gloria Gemma. I was happy to call a reputable company with a well-developed civic conscience...

Arriving within 3 hours - while the floor sanders noisily transformed my floors - the plumber diagnosed the problem as a cracked stack pipe. A what? The main pipe that carries waste water from the tub, sink... and toilet, down to the basement, and out to the sewer line. Uh oh. He said he couldn't actually do the work; it required a salesman project manager to confirm, estimate price and book the work. Tomorrow. Greaaaaaaaat.

When I spoke with Guy, I discovered I knew his father - wow, small world! - who was also a plumber, and who occurred to me as an option to call to get another bid. But, I learned, his father had retired and the business was gone. My short list got even shorter.

Guy confirmed it was the stack pipe. Since it was cast iron, he also recommended the dining room ceiling be opened up to check the bathroom plumbing; if they were old lead pipes as he suspected, they could be damaged when the stack pipe was disturbed. I approved.

But what about the ceiling repair? I didn't want a patch in my new home - the old ceiling looked perfect. So we discussed applying sheet rock over the entire ceiling. $$$$$ but I know me - I would never be happy with visible seams and bulges from a patch. Guy assured me I would be happy... but the final estimate would have to wait until the ceiling was opened to assess the full scope of the work. We were talking a couple of thousand dollars though. *gulp*

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Some of the paneling on the basement wall had to be removed to allow fuller access to the stack pipe. (Of course, the pipe couldn't be located in the unfinished portion of the basement!)

There was another HUGE surprise waiting behind the wall: a wide open crack almost the full vertical length of another section of the stack pipe!

 

...gross...

The two-man team from Gem Plumbing & Heating arrived on November 11. First, they had to open up their work area. (Oh! My poor perfect ceiling!)

After cutting their hole of about 4 feet by 4 feet, they discovered that the plumbing was actually already PVC. That was the good news.

The bad news? Apparently my parents had already done what I proposed to do: cover the partially destroyed ceiling with an entirely new one, as there was evidence of a second ceiling already in place in the rest of the room, with only one ceiling - much of which Gem had just removed - in the area under the bathroom. All work stopped. Guy the salesman project manager was called in.

New plan: since a third ceiling could not be applied, the entire dining room ceiling would have to be demolished, new furring strips / strapping applied, and then the sheet rock for the new full ceiling installed.  

Wait. Demolished?

Guy said he'd call the company's "Handyman" to come in assess the situation and help establish the cost for all this unexpected work. Tomorrow. The two-man team then opened the wall and went to work on the stack pipe itself.

The narrow "box" for the pipe was only as wide as the pipe joint - about 5 inches. It was also tucked a tad behind the china cabinet (see picture above). That meant the cast iron pipe could not be cut, and slid up and out as planned. Instead, it would have to be broken in place. In fact, the space was so tight that, as the plumber was hammering the front of the pipe, the back of it broke through the opposite wall.

Now I had a hole in the wall of my staircase, too.

And this was only the beginning.