#contractor hell

Remember that disaster contractor I had back when I moved in a year ago? To recap, I had hired this grifter to remove a floor to ceiling skinny cabinet, install my dishwasher in it’s place, lay a butcher block counter across the cabinets instead of the plastic countertops, build a cabinet box on the other side of the dishwasher, and then install a sink, a hot water dispenser, and the faucets. I…

I got the sink seated on my counters and sealed with silicone. One panic attack at a time. Then I realized the plumbing under the sink was insane. Like the Three Stooges image above, every time I tried to tighten something, another part leaked or fell apart.

So my wife hired Beacon Plumbing and TLDR, $722 later, we are good.

The longer version is my wife called and set it up, and the plumber, Jimmy, was here within 1.5 hours, but I didn't actually correct him when he assumed I was my wife. She has a masculine voice and a gender-neutral name. She is also visibly transgender and hid in the back room because she was in her PJs and had no makeup on.

While I was happy to roll the dice with the plumber and hope he wasn't a bigot, my wife was just not up to it. This is what happens when you are visibly trans. You just don't know how someone will react to you and if it's something super important? You might opt to obscure that fact.

Jimmy was a conservative, but "Not like those crazy bastards!" per our conversation, but my wife just didn't want to chance it. After the contractor and the issue with him?

Jimmy was a plumbing fucking hero, though. I will definitely call him for anything else.

Of note, he took pictures of the plumbing and posted them to a boomer-aged FB group for plumbing fails. In the 1.5 hours he was here fixing things, it kept binging on his phone with snarky boomer plumbers just taking the piss out of how bad it was. Apparently, it was quite popular.

I have a picture diagram:

Basically, it was so bad it never would have drained properly and probably fallen apart with use. Jimmy tightened everything up and fixed things so they would work. As a bonus, my drains now actually drain instead of slowly swirling forever. Nice.

I paid the man $722 to fix this. I already paid the nightmare contractor $3000ish. This is so far over our budget that it's insane. Thank god we have a VISA. Otherwise, this would have been critically fucked for our house.

Another side effect of all this is I am sore as fuck. The reason I hired someone was that I am not physically able to do this shit anymore. I have a disability. Yet, there I was, panic-fixing the sink, reinstalling the dishwasher, and sanding and fixing the counter joins as best as could be done. It's just nuts. I think I still have to shim the counter where the sink is, so there is no flex. Like WTF.

I can't help but wonder if my wife and I being queer inadvertently gave the contractor the in to just fuck us over completely. I mean, he's a grifter, that is for sure, but we presented as a trans couple, and while not actively an issue, he was shocked to find out I was trans. He was in our house for days, and my wife and I were chatting.

He also would not acknowledge or speak to my wife, and we could not tell if he was a sexist jackass or if it was because she was trans. Being visibly transgender means that it is always a question for her.

My wife heard of a local contractor company that was run by lesbians. First, lesbians get shit done in the world on an epic level, and second, we'd feel more comfortable working with someone from our own LGBTQ community. It would feel safer.

So for future work, so my wife doesn't have to hide in a back room while I pretend to be her, we are going to look for that.

Still, Jimmy was a goddammed hero.

he's on his way out now but i walked into them negotiating final payment and him once again dicking her around over a due date. me being hungry, under a month of continuous stress, and pissed off about the dude, i fired off on him for everything. got a solid due date out of him and had my mom hold off on the full payment until completion on that date.