The Patio Fiasco is Complete!

Over 4 months ago, we decided to extend our patio because we did not have a place big enough to put our patio table on.  We would put it on the grass but when it rained, the chairs would sink.  It was not cute.  On top of all of this, we had a small patio that buckled over the winter.  So we decided to replace those patio blocks and extend the whole thing.  We knew we wanted pavers, it was just a matter of procuring a landscaper and being able to afford it.

BEFORE: Area of grass and buckled pavers

This turned into the most stressful project we've ever done.

My mom is a bartender and her bar patron and mainly labor-type workers.  She made mention of our wanting to extend the patio and a customer said he was getting rid of his deck, the wood was new and he would design and install a deck for us.  We were very excited because all we were going to have to pay was labor.  3 days of phone tag later, he shows up on our agreed day an hour late.  I had to work a wedding that day, so I was already nervous. They were there for a while thinking of different designs.  He told me he would call me back later that day with a price.

3 weeks later, he gives MY MOM (not even me) a sketch of his design.  It's *nothing* what we discussed, he blocked off the whole thing where there is no access to the grass (hello!  landscapers need to get across there to mow the lawn!) and all of a sudden the wood is no longer free because he does not have enough.  So we need to buy the material & pay him.. and, oh wait!, the price of lumber is going up so that quote is no longer good.

Veto!  We decide a deck is not even what we wanted and would not be ideal for the space. Next...
I contact 4 concrete contractors and 3 landscapers for paver pricing.  1 concrete guy kept rescheduling to the point where I told him to forget it and the other 3 completely blew me off.  1 paver quote was redic, the other was reasonable and our landscaper's never called us back.

Come to find out my cousin's husband knows how to do this.  we hire him.  He tells us 2 weeks.  We have an idea to hire the landscapers to prep the area - remove existing pavers/dig down 6 inches and remove sod & dig down 6 inches and take it away.  $1000 quote later I told them they were out of their minds.  My cousin insures us he can do this.

We buy the material at Menard's.  Go in one day and get the wrong information from an idiot and a redic quote for material that leaves us thinking we cannot afford this project.  Go back, complain, get the correct help and free delivery.  Delivery comes, missing 2 skids.  The 10 skids still took up all the room in our garage though!

It took 4 more b*tchy phone calls and 4 more days to get the remaining pavers that we needed.  And then we didn't even have enough sand and paver base.  2 car load trips of 1000+ pounds later... we have all the material.  Oh!  But we have 10 bags of sand left and 500 pavers leftover.  *sigh*

We had to "hire" a friend of ours one day to come and help him, rent a sod cutter and borrow a few tools from a friend.  Add in a BUTTLOAD of rain and it took over 3 weeks to prep the area.  We had to find creative ways to reuse the dirt (we're leveling out the 'dip' along our fence in the yard and installing a retaining wall in the front).  We sat looking at a mess for a while:

He basically lived with us for 5 weeks straight while he finished this project.  Most of the delay was from the torrential rainfalls we had during those weeks which resulted in us having to rent a water pump 7 times and losing several days while things dried.  He finished last week Thursday.  2 days before my 4th BBQ.  I was able to get everything done.  I was down to the wire and I can barely walk but it's done.

Although, this was the most stressful project ever we are very pleased with the way it turned out.  We loveour new patio and are sure to get a lot of use out of it!

Patio Fiasco - Part 3

Just… wow! Why am I having such a hard time with this?! Our landscapers were supposed to come on Friday to give us a quote to dig up the sod and dig down 6 inches and then remove the existing pavers. Well we weren’t home Friday night, so I come home Saturday morning and no quote from the landscaper. I call him up and he says, “Oh, I have you down for today.” Me: “Ok great, I will be home, just ring my doorbell.” No call, no show.

We got up early on Sunday and decided to go to breakfast before we hit Menard’s to go try and buy our materials for the second time. At Menard’s, there was no one out in the garden area to help us! So I stormed up to the manager’s desk and told them how we were there on Thursday and had terrible customer service. I told her that we were given all the wrong information, so they almost lost out on our sale because I could easily go to Home Depot or Lowe’s. I said, can you please have someone help us. She said I’ll help you and she did, she took us over to the assistant manager in building and he helped us order everything we needed. We even got free delivery for the bad experience we had earlier in the week. I was telling this guy how we’ve had so much trouble getting people to call me back, he was surprised and gave us the numbers to 3 other landscapers. So we came home and call our landscaper and these other three. No answer. No call back.

Yesterday (Monday) my landscaper called me around 8 a.m. he said he had been over on Sunday and rang the doorbell. Well, we had been at breakfast at that time. He didn’t see the marking we left on the sod, but he was going to stop by again and leave a quote in our mailbox.

I was very excited to get home to see this quote. When I opened the envelope all I could do was laugh. $920! He’s out of his effing mind!

So I spent almost all last night on the phone. I have a friend of friend coming out today to give us a quote and I’m hoping it’s good! We also had to reschedule the delivery of our material for next Wednesday.

All in all, we’re losing another week but I feel better about putting it off another week. I don’t feel so nervous because we aren’t rushed to try and find someone to do this.

Nothing is ever easy… the Patio Fiasco continues

Yesterday was sure fun (insert sarcasm font here). I call the Village to ask if we need a permit. We do, we also need a dig number. Call the dig people, get a number. Talk to a few co-workers asking about the permit and such and they tell me there is no need for a permit. So I made Frank call and cancel the dig service.

We met at Menard’s after I got off work and we were all ready to buy all of our materials. The store was full of 18 year old employees. The kid helping us had no clue what he was talking about. What we figured out and what he was telling us resulted in the price being tripled. We were pretty upset thinking now we really cannot do this project. The main price difference was with the sand. It’s $9 a bag and when we asked how much square footage each bag yields he told us 3.5 sq ft. Whoa! This would make the cost of the sand over a grand itself. So we left.

So we come home and are looking through the flyer again. This kid really was an idiot. The bag of sand covers 40-60 square feet! We figured it all out and were back to our original price. Now I am going back to Menard’s on Saturday, reading the manager a riot act and buying the stuff we need.

Now, we want to hire the landscapers to remove the grass, dip the hole and remove the existing pavers we do have. I called him back last night, as we spoke on Tuesday, to give him the depth at which we need it dug. I tell him 3 inches. He told me that that is not enough and you want at least 6 inches so you can do 3-4 inches of paver then a layer of sand then the paver. He was like, I don’t want to mess your cousin up but you are my customer and I am going to be honest with you. So he is coming out today to take a look at it and give me a quote for 3 inches and 6 inches including the price to remove the existing pavers. Let’s hope we can afford it.

If the landscapers are able to do this, then it will save my cousin 2 days of work at least. I really hope this all works out and we are going about this the right way.

I cannot wait for this to be over with so I can sit on my new patio with a beer and call it a day!

The Patio Project Lives!

Wow, I could have sworn tons of people were out of work right now in this economy.  You would think people would be jumping at the opportunity to make a couple grand right now.  I guess, not so much.  Remember when I mentioned that we should have 5 quotes by Monday to mull over?  That didn’t happen.  Here’s the lowdown of how things went.

Concrete Guy #1 – blew me off on Wednesday.  I had a feeling in the puit of stomach he wasn’t going to show.  He called while we were trying to put the new flusher on the basement toilet.  He wanted to reschedule for Thursday or Friday.  Well, I had an appointment with a client Thursday night so I told him I would probably be home all day on Friday.  On Thursday night, after I called off for Friday, I sent him a text letting him know I wanted him to stop by tomorrow morning or afternoon.  He didn’t text me until 5:45 p.m. Friday night after the sump pump took a dump I knew his prices were going to high and didn’t want to waste his time.  I lied and said we had a sump pump emergency and now we couldn’t afford it.  He was only for stamped concrete anyways

Concrete Guy #2 – Now this guy I was really excited about.  He was a family friend and I was told the prices were going to be good. I spoke with him (well, if you call that speaking… he has the strongest Italian accent and I could barely understand him on the phone) on Tuesday and he was to come over Saturday morning.  I canceled brunch with a friend, who I seriously need to catch up with, for this meeting.  That morning, I drove frank to work, ran some errands and got home around 8:45.  I had 45 minutes before I expected him, so I started cleaning my newly defrosted fridge.  9:30 came and went.  I was pissed.  He didn’t even call.  Oh well, at least my cleaning momentum stuck with me and the house is spic n span!

Concrete Guy #3 – My mother, being the talker that she is, stopped a concrete guy (in the middle of a job) and talked to him about our project.  She got a card and I called to schedule an estimate.  The guy must have asked me to repeat my name 4 times and said he’d call back to set up an estimate.  No call.

Our landscapers – never called me back

Paver Estimate – I was looking through Craig’s list and was able to email a guy pictures of our space with a description of what we wanted.  He gave me a quick estimate that way, but it seems a bit high.

So now, I’ve lost another week and am not much farther than where I started.  The good thing about all this waiting is the fact that we were able to really figure out what will be best for that space.  When our one friend came over Friday to look at the sump pump, he said that pavers are the way to go. Turns out my cousin’s husband knows how to do this. So he is going to come spend the work week at our house next week (to save 2-3 hours in traffic during rush hour a day) and get it done.

I am so relieved to finally have a plan in motion.  This week will be a bit hectic because we need to get a lot done.  I want to see if I can get the landscapers to dig up the grass for us and then take the old pavers when we remove them.  However, this would require me to actually get a hold of them.  Then we will need to procure the permit with the village.  Lastly, go select the pavers & set up the delivery.

I can’t wait to get this started!  I really like the design of this one here, so I think this may be our inspiration!

The Patio Fiasco

We entertain a lot, especially in the summer. So now that the wedding is over with and we paid off a lot of bills, we have some play money. We would like to spend this money on a patio. Our main reason for wanting to do this is that, with our current layout, our chairs sink into the grass and we finally have a pretty lawn that we don't want ruined. We started out with the idea of extending our existing patio pavers to create a patio area large enough to put our patio table, chairs and have some extra space too. We have a 28’ x 12’ area in front of our sunroom that is perfect for it. Here is where the fiasco begins.

Well, my mom is a bartender and the bar she works at is frequented by tradesman. She happened to be talking about our patio paver project and one of her customers, a master craftsman, said, “Well I am remodeling my house and getting rid of my deck. I can give it to her for free, design it and install it.” All I was going to have to pay for was the labor. Woohoo! Right? Wrong.

5 days after his unreturned phone call and I am running into the house having just got home from work to grab my ringing phone. I was stuck in traffic for 2 hours and my bladder was about to explode. My mother says, “Chris is here, he wants to come by tomorrow, here talk to him!” I was like, “wait, mom, I have to work tomorrow!” [I do side work as a videographer for weddings] She hands the phone to him, we decide he is going to come over the following morning (Saturday) at 9 a.m.

I was a little more than perturbed at this situation seeing as I was about to work a 12 hour day the next day and now I had to get up extra early to get ready, deal with him coming over and then prepping lunch for my friends before we went to go work this wedding. Saturday comes and I am up, half ready and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I got frustrated and went upstairs to start my make-up so I wouldn’t be rushing/running late later. One eye done and *knock, knock*. Le sigh.

An hour later and he has a few ideas but no idea of a price. Great. He tells me he will draw it up, get some prices and get back to me.

A week later and no response; he sees my mom in the bar and says the machine to make the drawing is broken. [Because there’s only one Menards in Chicago, right? *rolls eyes] Also, he can’t use his ‘free’ wood anymore because it is not big enough. Okay. Finally, after 3 weeks of waiting (and no correspondence with ME) he gives the drawing and quote to my mom. Ugh. *I* need it. I live 20 miles from my mom and only see her once a week. With my crazy commute, it’s simply too much to run over there after work one day. So I finally get the sketch on Mother’s Day.

The deck is just not what we wanted. We got the estimate and the drawing and he didn't even draw up what we discussed. He only put one set of stairs and a handrail all around it. I don't want a handrail, I need 2 set of stairs (hello, the landscapers need to get across it with a lawnmower!) and why would I want it closed off the rest of our yard? Plus the only reason this project turned into a deck was because we were supposed to be getting free wood. Which is not happening. AND the price of lumber is going up (or already has) so the estimate isn't even accurate anymore. Not to mention the fact that we are losing 2 feet of width on it because of how the roof of the sunroom overhang is and apparently the deck needs to be 13 inches off the ground, so someone as tall as Frank would hit his head on the overhang if we had it so that you walked out of the sunroom onto the deck.

So now onto different options:

We're worried about putting pavers in because the way our current ones look now. They buckled in the winter and so they are all sinking, they move, etc. We live on the corner and our house is on a bit of a slant. So that particular part of the yard is on the higher ground & gets a lot of water. We worry if we put in new pavers (even if we do it right) what's to say that in 2-5 years it won't do the same thing?

I just want a place to put my patio where the chairs won't sink into the grass.

So now, we're considering concrete... and having it stamped so it *looks* like pavers. Only problem is we don't know how much concrete would be and we just lost 3 weeks waiting for the deck quote.

So yesterday I called around. I have 3 concrete contractors coming by the house this week, already got 1 paver quote and waiting on another. I have heard 3 times now that pavers are not ideal so I really think we are going to end up with concrete. I also heard stamped concrete is more likely to crack. So watch it end up being just plain concrete. Whatever. I just want to sit down at my patio set with my beer and not sink into the grass.

This has become one big headache when it should be fun.