Problems Seem To Multiply

On June 16, 2020, I decided I needed a bathroom floor replaced. What I had was functional but I was just tired of seeing the same floor for over twenty years. I visited Home Depot because I have their credit card and thought it would be easier to work through them and get one year without interest. I wandered up and down the flooring samples until I found a few I liked. The clerk was young and I knew he could not have had a lot of experience, though he seemed to know what would work best in my bathroom. He discouraged using certain ones for different reasons and we finally settled on one pattern. I had wanted a wooden looking floor but he said it might be too slippery. The one I ended up picking he thought would be perfect because it would not be as slippery as the wood floor.  I wondered if he knew what he was telling me or what he had been trained to do and say. I liked the sample and I purchased the material. He suggested the quarter-round that is a finishing touch and I purchased that also.

At home I checked my floor again and noticed that the edge of the floor did not have the quarter-round, but instead a vinyl molding went along the bottom of the wall. I called the store and told them I did not want the quarter-round and just the vinyl molding. They deducted the item from the bill and I was told I had already paid for the molding. The next move would be when the installer would call me to know when the floor would be installed.

Around mid-June I received a call from Home Solutions and since the phone number came up unknown, I did not answer until I heard the message. I began calling the number and for two weeks  no one answered my calls. During this time, the materials came in and three boxes were picked up on July 7, 2020 by my son in law.  Delivery is $75 and I did not want to pay to have the materials delivered so on around July 17 I went to pick up the remainder of materials. About 4 people looked for the items and no one could find them. One said, "We may have to reorder." I called Home Depot and the person in flooring went to where the delivered items are located and she found them right away. On Sunday, the 19th three transitional strips were delivered at no charge. I thought those strips were the vinyl molding.   Finally, around mid-July I received a call from Home Solutions and a date was set up for the installers to come out on July 29, 2020. I took everything out of the bathrooms, leaving them bare and ready and then I received another call that the installer was ill. I asked if he had the Coronavirus and he said, "No, he isn't feeling well." They rescheduled for Friday July 31 and they would be out between 8 and 10. At ten I received a call that they would be out around noon.

Since I had a couple of free hours, I decided to go grocery shopping. As I was leaving the store, I received a call letting me know that the installers were at my house waiting for me. I told the caller that I had been told they would arrive at noon. I rushed home and found two, tall young men waiting for me. That's when the fun began. They did not have any information about tearing off the old  flooring. I told them the floor was to come up before any tile could be put down. He insisted since it was not in his orders that he could not do it. My response was: "Then pack all the materials and return them to Home Depot. I will cancel the whole order."  He said, "Don't do anything. Let me call my company."

He got on the phone and went outside. I could see him pacing back and forth as he talked. I also got on the phone and called Home Depot. After speaking with Perry, the manager, he said they would tear up the floor and he would let Home Solutions know.  I mentioned the molding and he said it had  been ordered and should have been picked up with the rest of the materials. He would look into it and call me. The two installers came in and began tearing up the floor. I saw where there was a hole in my
floor and wondered if the two guys, that spoke with an accent, knew what they were doing. One installer I nicked named the Bad News Guy. Every time he needed to talk with me, it was bad news.  One toilet, instead of having a bolt had a screw and he could not touch it because he did not know what was below the screw. He said in all the time he has worked on removing toilets he has not seen such a thing. He told me I would need to call a plumber and my suggestion was not to lift the toilet but to put the flooring around the toilet. He agreed. Before long he was back. "Come see." he said. I followed him and the floor without the linoleum looked like a war zone. He had a small gadget that measures moisture and at one point it showed 9 and in another point it was 3. When he set the gadget down on in the middle of the floor, it showed 0.  "There is some leakage, either now or at some time. That is what the dark spot is, it is water that has leaked from somewhere." When I looked at the floor I was shocked at how awful it looked and knew my project was going to cost me more money than I had anticipated!

After seeing the disgusting looking floor I wondered if my old floor could have worked for a few more years!

The workers could not work any further. They had to wait for the wetness to dry which would take 3-4 days and in the meantime I should call a plumber to see if he could find the leakage and also see about the screw instead of a bolt holding down the toilet.

Talk about depression. After waiting two months for a new floor, here I was with a room all torn up, more money I would need to pay out, and who knows what would be found in the other bathroom! Since this blog is quite long I decided to continue the story in another blog, beginning with the plumber.

"Television is like the invention

of indoor plumbing. It didn't 

change people's habits,

it just kept them inside the house."

Alfred Hitchcock