It feels like the renovation of my condo has been going on forever. And that’s probably because the process started about a year ago. It was just under a year ago that we started to interview contractors to do the work. The actual work didn’t start until the end of January, but that’s still almost a year. Most of the work only took 3 months, and since then it’s just been a bunch of random little things that still had to be completed.
I had been warned by my parents and everyone I know who has done a renovation that it will always take much longer than expected. But I think this is even longer than what I had been warned about. Some of the delays have been because of things needing to be worked on that had to be planned out. For example, when my floors had to be redone, they had to work on ordering enough new floors for me and that took time to come in. And once the new floors arrived, they had to work around my schedule and I had to make sure I didn’t have any meetings the day that they were working. I think they also wanted to do some of the things on the punchup list on the same day to not have to be here while I work more than necessary.
And because of the timing of other things in my life, there was a bit of time between the floors being redone and when my parents would be able to be in LA again. And my parents wanted to inspect things before we signed off on all the work being completed, which I totally understood. I think I’m so used to living in rentals that had a lot of little flaws, so the small mistakes aren’t things I noticed. For example, my parents noticed that two of my kitchen cabinets weren’t straight and the gap between them was crooked. I don’t know if I ever would have seen that if it wasn’t pointed out to me. But once they did point it out, I always noticed it. So after they went through the condo again, we created another punchup list to be completed before we signed off.
The work was supposed to be done this week, but it ended up only partially being done. Some of the work is related to the tile in my kitchen and bathroom, and I guess their tile person wasn’t available or there was a miscommunication. But there were other things that could have been done, and most were completed except for one.
There is a fastener for my dryer vent that isn’t secure, so that needs to be fixed. It should be a very simple fix, but they have to move my washer and dryer in order to do it. And because I don’t want my floors to be damaged, I knew I would have to make sure that they protected my floors before they did that work. I noticed when the worker was about to start that there was nothing on my floors. I asked him what he was going to do to protect my floors since they are very aware of my floors having to be redone before. He said he didn’t have anything, and I told him that he couldn’t do that repair today unless he protected the floors first. Since he had nothing with him, that wasn’t completed and they will need to return another time.
I’m so used to not making trouble and just trying to go with the flow, but I was glad that I stood up for myself. I know that asking them to wait until they could protect the floors wasn’t the biggest ask, but it was important for me to do it. I’m used to being in a rental where I didn’t feel pride or ownership over things like floors, but now these are mine and I have every right to ask for people working on my place to keep them nice. It’s similar to how I’m getting used to asking people to take off their shoes in my house since I don’t like shoes to be worn inside (mainly to keep things clean). It’s not easy to ask someone to do something that might inconvenience them a bit, but I have every right to do that since this is my home.
I’ve tried to be better about standing up for myself and asking for what I want in different aspects of my life, and this was just another one. And yes, this means that the fixes that need to be done will be delayed again, but that’s not something I feel at fault for. It would have been delayed anyway since the tile person was not there. But even if everything else had been done, knowing that I won’t need to worry about my floor being scratched up will be worth whatever delay that might happen.
And eventually, all of these last little things will be done and the renovation will finally be done. But it looks like there will still be a bit more to go and I’ll just have to continue to be patient.
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