Everybody buckle up because I am furious and the only cure is telling all of tumblr The Saga of the Window Replacement.
This tale beings on the 14th of April, when I received a fairly innocuous text; window installation would be beginning in my apartment building tomorrow, my unit to be done sometime in the next few days. Have my cats in a safe place.
Okay, I said. Surely this will not be one of the most aggravating and stressful events of the last several years, I said. How long can replacing 5 windows really take?
The answer, friends, is THREE WEEKS. They begin be rendering my kitchen completely unusable on day one, working on both the windows in there at once. Alright, I said. Seems reasonable. No way to do construction in a kitchen without it being out of commission for a bit.
Except, it was not for a bit. For some reason that is completely beyond me, they began work in my kitchen, got a week and a half in a halfway done, and then decided to do work in another unit. While my kitchen was a construction zone. In my innocent desire to give them the benefit of the doubt, I figured it had something to do with mud drying or other construction stuff. But no. My kitchen sat, half finished and untouched, for FOUR DAYS.
I feel its time to add a little context - you may have noticed me mention cats earlier! I have 2, who had been locked in my bedroom with me, their food and water, and their litterbox for the entire time construction was being done. We were all going a little mad.
At this point, it was may 4th and my kitchen had been unusable for a little over two weeks. I very politely texted my landlord; does he know how much longer work will take? I would like to have a kitchen again please. I was told 3 more days. Suspicious, given the fact that the first two were not finished 2 and a half weeks in, but alright. I'll take it.
The next day, I arrive home to discover that not only had they not done any more work on the kitchen, but they had also completely torn my living room apart and we're partway through replacing the window in there.
Friends, I was FURIOUS.
I did the only thing I could think of, and wrote my landlord a text that could technically be described as extremely polite but more practically sounded like a threat. I explained that 2/3 rooms, in my unit that I pay for, were unusable and that I needed a proper timeline from him ASAP. I did not say the words "tennants rights organization" but they were HEAVILY implied.
My landlord, as landlords do, asked me to "please adjust". If that had been the entire text, I would have started making calls at that moment. Luckily for my landlord, he also promised to have the entire shindig done the morning of the 8th.
So, I packed up my cats, moved them to my parents house, and waited with the last sliver of patience I had. Friday morning comes around, and the windows are.... technically finished. These contractors, who had taken two and a half weeks to get mostly done 2 windows, had completed the last two in 3 days.
And completed certainly was... one word for it. Not only had they done a poor job mudding(I would know, I've done it), and failed to do any caulking(I would know, I've done it), they had also done such a terrible job repainting around the windows that I, the tennant with limited painting experience, went in and did a better job in TWENTY SIX MINUTES. I timed it.
This brings us to right now, three weeks after this whole kerfuffle began, with me sitting on my bed writing this post and watching my newly painted(by me) wall dry. I wish this story had a moral or something, but mostly this is being written down so I don't punch a wall or send my landlord an extremely bitchy email.
