Contractor Hell

Ok, we have a tiny patch of land at the back of our house. About 22 X 22 feet. We want a fence.

We found a company (I'm not going to start trashing. Yet.) that makes nice fences. They are not cheap, but they aren't out of whack by the standards of this area.

Cedar, 3.5 foot concrete footings. 6" X 6" posts. Gate hardware. Leveling of our lot and removal of crap. All the good shit. Buddy is going to loan me his paint gun dealy.

The problem is that we first contacted him in April. It is now manifestly not April. Not even a bit. Nor is it June or July. Yesterday he blew off another appointment with us (back story, we'd given up on him and were thinking of doing it ourselves). His reasons are always great. How can you get mad at a man who is having some kind of gastro thing. Anyway Chris called him last night and told him what was what. Basically "sorry you're sick, but fuck you buddy get your ass over here and put in our fence dammit". He doesn't understand the problem, we haven't paid a deposit etc etc ... She tries to tell him that it's not the fence's quality we're worried about, it's the whole existance of the fence thing.

Anyway, he shows today. An hour late (ATTENTION! NO ONE IS IMPRESSED)

So he starts leveling our backyardlet. And he figures on putting the rubble in the empty lot acorss the ally. The owner of said lot comes out. Discussions are held. Suddenly he's leveling our lot and making the other one smooth as well. This is where being passive agressive is bad. Someone with less character flaws would have gone up to him and said "Hi. Stop. Now. Finish my shit and then play on this guy's lot.".

I'm not that person.

So the long and the short of it is four of the seven posts are in. They are plum and everything (6" X 6" is big in theory but HUGE in practice), and they will be back to do the other three. He still can't figure out what is going on.

I'm still a passive agressive asshole that can't deal with any form of conflict.

But the fence should be in by the end of the week. We've priced dirt and sod and gravel – we're going to do a quicky version of our yard this year and then work on it through the fall and next spring.