Workmen...Gah

What is it about workmen, that they end up driving you completely crazy? We've had three different home renovation jobs on the go for the past two weeks now, and none of the workmen we hired showed up when they said they would. Drives me mental.

Job #1: replacing a rotten beam beneath the deck, just under the front door. Since it was a relatively small, but uncomfortable job (who wants to crawl in the dirt underneath a house?), we initially only found one builder willing to give a quotation for the work. Cost? $4,000. ?!?!?!? Eventually, through my sister-in-law, we found someone else, who does this kind of odd construction work in his spare time. His bill was only $400 - but he showed up to do the work over a week after he said he would.

Job #2: replacing the foundation of our old shed. At the moment, it's basically balanced on a couple of old beams, which have begun to shift and wobble. Unless we do something, the shed itself will eventually collapse. As it's also in a slightly weird location, we're going to have the whole structure lifted, moved a few feet to align it with our lot line, then set it down again on a proper, poured concrete foundation. Again, we only found one builder willing to quote - I won't tell you how much it's going to cost because I'm still in shock, frankly. So these guys were meant to show up Monday...but we've yet to see them. I wouldn't mind so much, except that we had to totally empty the shed in preparation - and in consequence, my dining room is currently packed to the rafters with things like lawnmowers, bicycles and garden tools. The snowblower is out on the deck, covered by a tarp (which is hardly secure).

Job #3: re-finishing the old wood floor upstairs on the hallway landing. Might as well get all the messy jobs done at once, right? The landing upstairs has a painted floor - it's the only bit of wood floor in the house that's not been properly refinished. The flooring guys were scheduled to start this morning. When they hadn't shown up by noon, A. rang them. Apparently they'd 'forgotten'. *rolls eyes* However, at least they appeared after lunch and started work. Today they sanded off all the old paint, and applied the first coat of varnish - there's two coats still to come, and I'll post pictures when the job gets finished. Which I hope will be by Saturday - but given how things have been going, who knows?