[Part Two of my saga about getting my wood raised deck replaced by a contractor who means well but sometimes fails to deliver].
On Thursday I about blew a gasket since I thought they destroyed or vandalized a security camera. I am at lunch with my boss, and I check on the live video via iPhone, and suddenly one camera just goes all fuzzy and dark. This is a vandal-resistant wall-mounted dome camera.
So I drive home, ready to kill someone….it seems that the contractor ‘accidentally’ hung his hooded jacket on the end of a ten-foot board and ‘accidentally’ leaned it directly onto the camera. I took a photo of that, then moved it.
The good news is the project is now 99% complete, no punches have been thrown, I did not have to call the cops, and no lawyers are needed at this point.
We figured out most of the issues, and once they pass final inspections we’re done. For all intents and purposes, I have a well built good looking raised deck, built on budget.
It DOES have rail posts that have both 3/8″ and 1/2″ fasteners in each notched 4×4 post, the corner post centers are notched-out (making them much weaker), and the posts are set in concrete, with dirt backfilled into the hole (soil contact is bad).
Plus there is a big $1600 engineered beam that is there only because they goofed on the the plan, and it was too late to fix it once we got there. I argued them down to around $800 on that. (I also noted that they ordered the WRONG beam the first time, which delayed the project by a day).
There are still a couple of issues that are, in my opinion, done poorly, but it ‘meets code’ and someone with no knowledge of construction would never notice.
At this point I am so ‘over’ the whole project, that I would really prefer that they just get off my property and and I can fix these things myself.
Key Learning: Before a project, SPELL OUT EVERY DETAIL
Don’t assume they will use the correct fastener, or even any fasteners at all, get it on paper. Require detailed specs about EVERYTHING and get it all ON PAPER. Inspect EVERYTHING and photograph EVERYTHING every step of the way.
After the fact, I figured out where they made mistakes from photos. For example, I have photos that show the concrete pad for the stair landing was poured AFTER the stairs were installed, which explained the goof around the pad.
I THOUGHT I had done all this right; I asked a hundred questions and had what I thought was a fairly good plan. Wow was I wrong.
