The renovation of my condo has been a much longer process than I think anyone imagined. There were things that were out of our control that added to the timeline and there were things that needed to be adjusted or corrected that made things take longer. I’ve never really been directly involved in a renovation before, so I didn’t know what to expect going into this. But I know that things haven’t been as easy as they could have been. It’s been frustrating, especially when I was waiting for most of the work to be done so I could finally move in. I think the last 8 months since I lived here were easier since I wasn’t also dealing with the stress of a bad landlord and trying to get ready to move.
There were a few small things that were fixed in the fall and I was hoping at that time that would be the end of the work. But unfortunately, there were more issues that came up after that. Everything was pretty minor and didn’t necessarily affect my daily living, but they needed to be fixed. If this was a rental and it was a handyman fixing things, I wouldn’t be as picky. But since this is my home and we hired them to do specific work, I want everything to be right. For example, I found some cracks in the grout in my kitchen that I wanted to be fixed. This wasn’t going to cause any issues in my kitchen or become a bigger problem down the line, but I still wanted there to be no cracks in the grout.
Because of scheduling, the holidays, and other stuff happening; the contractor wasn’t able to get to my place until this past week. There were only a handful of things to fix, and they were all connected to tile work and things like grout and caulking. I was very specific with them about what needed to be fixed and how I wanted it to be completed (thanks to my parents who told me what needed to be done), and I know I was probably a little harsh and maybe rude when talking to them. But this has been a year-long process and I felt like things had taken long enough and I was ready for it to be done.
I think because there have been so many little fixes, they had a supervisor here as well to make sure that my concerns were being understood and addressed and they also explained some of the repairs that were being done a little differently than what I expected. I know I don’t know a lot about construction, but I still want to make sure that I understand why certain materials are being used and not others. For example, to fix some cracked grout, they didn’t use normal grout but something that was more like a grout and caulk hybrid so it would allow for movement that might happen from the unit above mine and would hopefully prevent any other cracks in the future. I appreciate that they took the time to go over those things with me so I felt a bit better about everything going on.
As far as I can tell, I think the work is finally done. We haven’t signed off on it yet because my parents want to see everything in person. They will be here in about a month, so they will go over everything in super detail to make sure there isn’t something missing or incomplete. But I have high hopes that maybe the work is finally done and I can feel like I’ve gotten past this phase of my new home. If it’s not, I guess there will be a bit more work to do before I can finally feel like that.
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