I’m Surrounded by Idiots and Morons

There is no other explanation for it. Why else would I have to deal with so many idiots and morons on a daily basis? That's the best I can figure given the general competence level of literally every single person who has had anything to do with building this house with us.

Case in point: About 3 weeks ago Eric turns to me and says "Hey, don't we have to change the filters in our air handling units for the AC?" My answer had something to do with the fact that I've never, ever in my entire adult life had central air conditioning nor the need to maintain it, so I literally had no freakin' clue as to what types of filters are inside these things or how often they need to be changed. A quick visit to the Trane website revealed that we do indeed have filters that need to be changed every couple of months. Awesome, I love my AC so I am more than willing to sacrifice a filter or two on it's alter in order to bask in the glow of its chilly awesomeness. A quick exploration to our upstairs air handling unit revealed, yet again, how stupid every single person who built this house is. The fact that the downstairs unit suffered the same moronic fate just proves my point even more.

Look at this photo. See if you can tell me what is wrong with it:

You can see the tray labeled filter where you can pull out the tray and change the filter. Can you see how pulling out this tray might not be feasible? Just in case you can't orient yourself, there are two issues in this photo—1) there is PVC pipe attached to the AC unit that is blocking the filter from coming out 2) There is sheetrock around the pipe and against the unit that also prevents the tray from coming out. AWESOME!

It's hard to see in this photo, but the tray is clearly labeled "FILTER" in big letters. So first, some idiot HVAC assistant decided it was an awesome idea to make this PVC pipe run past the filter in a way that doesn't allow the filter to come out more than two inches. This is someone who theoretically installs AC units for a living every single day of their life. And he's made this kind of ridiculous mistake. Then his boss who is supposed the master AC guy either signed off on it or (in reality) doesn't check it at all and we are stuck with this pile of crap. Then a minimum wage Ecuadorian worker framed and sheet rocked a wall to block the filter as well. Then a moron GC either saw this and approved it or (in reality) didn't look at it at all and relied on his non-English speaking workers with no construction expertise to do the right thing. And that fact that your GC can't speak Spanish but has a pretty much Spanish-only speaking crew probably has something to do with this as well. And don't forget he's a sort of triple-moron for having hired and subbed out to the idiot HVAC guy in the first place. Ha! If it wasn't so annoying and thoroughly predictable, it might be funny.

We took the sheetrock down and saw this wonderfulness:

Now you can really see how the metal stud and the PVC pipe block the filter. This was our solution for the sheetrock/framing side of things:

We cut and reframed the wall and then re-sheet rocked the wall and left a small channel in it to allow the filter to come out. We are still waiting on the HVAC guys to come out and resolve the PVC piping issue. Commence holding breathe in 3, 2, 1…We could do it ourselves, but if we can get him to fix it that is obviously preferable. Daily, nagging phone calls are currently in use. Sigh, I hate people.

Good news? Let's end on some good news, shall we? After about 2 months of beating my head against the wall for hours on end every day dealing with Sears and the cabinets for Eric's studio, we finally have some success. Eric wanted to give up and just dispute the credit card charge, but after looking and looking I knew that these were the best cabinets for space and it would be worth it to deal with them for a little while longer if it meant getting Eric his cabinets. I lost hours and hours of my life shuffling between Sears.com and Sears home delivery while they collectively tried to pull their heads out of their asses and get us what we ordered. Finally today the second cabinet was delivered and while it was a little banged up, everything worked and the cosmetic issues were quite minimal, so I accepted the delivery. Success!

Here is their awesomeness:

They need a little shimming to even them out but otherwise you can see they are literally perfect for the space—they go right up to the ceiling and are exactly the right width between the wall and the electrical panel. They also provide tons and tons and storage for Eric and as I've said before, the boy has been severely lacking in storage for the entire time I have know him. This might give him the ability to actually organize his huge amount of music supplies. You can fit a ton inside each of these things. Inside view which shows the super special guitar storage area—rockin!

Success comes in short little bursts—we have to revel in them whenever we get a chance.

Comments

[Mark]

You said: "minimum wage Ecuadorian worker"..."relied on his non-English speaking workers with no construction expertise"..."your GC can't speak Spanish but has a pretty much Spanish-only speaking crew"

On a daily basis, non-English speaking people throughout the world exercise their skills with competence and integrity. Your quality issues are rooted in your hiring of incompetent contractors and/or workers, not in their language skills.

[dana]

More proof of the post title right here. Obviously I'm not saying that people not speaking English means that they won't do a good job--you latched on to a couple of sentences and made them the point of this entire post which is obviously not about what language people speak. The point is that there is an issue if a boss cannot properly communicate with his workers and more importantly does not review their work for quality control to find stupid mistakes like this. The other point is that if someone can't read English they probably wouldn't understand the importance of not sheet rocking over a tray labeled "FILTER". You've missed the point completely.

[james]

sorry to post twice; can i get the contact info for the sub who did your staircase? thanks a ton--j

[dana]

Hi James, I will pass your email along to our stair contract Alex--he is awesome. Only issue is I know he is mega-swamped right now and as soon as his schedule clears up we get him first!

[Tijmen Stam / IIVQ]

I guess Alex is the only exception to the morons and idiots part?

Happy that you finally got your cabinets.

Recently I did some construction myself, where we swapped around the oven and the washing machine and redid the piping for both. Finally it all worked out but then when we were finally done, we realized it was impossible to remove the washing machine without cutting the water line - I decided on that hoping that won't be needed to be done too soon.

Such things do happen in construction - a lot - and the only thing you can do about it is hoping they will be resolved quickly. However annoying it is - if you work yourself up over it the only thing affected will be your peace of mind - negatively.
Please take a nice cup of tea and relax, and enjoy your day.

Tijmen