We got a new garage door. It came with an epic story

September 30, 2021 6:41 PM

Jana takes her measurements, then asks when our home was built. “Nineteen fifty-six. Is that an issue?” “Nope.”
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (42 comments total)

but it begins with a single click on the Home Depot website.

Three sentences in, and I already know how this is going to end.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:00 PM on September 30, 2021 [31 favorites]

I was...identifying. Our experience with the local big-box installer for carpet was such that we will never, ever go near them again: among other things, they botched the initial measurements, meaning that the price went up substantially before we could take delivery; took months to actually install the carpet; and then, when they did the install, we discovered that they had mismeasured again.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:05 PM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

This was the exact opposite experience I had replacing a garage door in San Francisco many years ago, in which the installers did everything exactly right and were in and out in all of an hour and a half, but pulling a "self-service" permit for the installation with the planning department (which the installers had recommended as a cost-savings effort) was an exercise in bureaucratic torture.

PD: "You can't get a permit for a [high-end, insulated, custom-painted] metal garage door to replace the rotted wood door on your house because your house is old enough to be eligible to be nominated for historic preservation."

Me: "But is it actually a historic home?"

PD: "No, it is simply old enough to be eligible so this has to go through historic preservation."

Me: "Literally all of the other houses on my block both were built around the same time, and they literally all have had the old wood doors replaced with metal garage doors."

PD: "Well, those were almost certainly installed without a permit."

Me: "OK, so why would a metal garage door prevent me from getting a permit?"

PD: "Because a metal garage door would not fit in with the look of the other homes on your block."

Me: "Uhhhhh... ?"

I dug in my feet, got into arguments, escalated things to the historic preservation department, who upon some persistence let the planning department know that my home was unimportant enough and I was wasting enough peoples' time that I could just install my damned nice looking metal garage door.
posted by eschatfische at 7:14 PM on September 30, 2021 [64 favorites]

FYI - lead safety isn’t a California issue. It’s dictated by the EPA. Any home older than 1978 is assumed by regulation to have lead paint present. Unless you test the work and maintain records of said test, you must follow lead-safe work practices when doing any demolition work. Similar to asbestos abatement, this will include Tyvek suits, respirators and lots of water to keep lead particles out of the air. Oddly, lead waste can go to a regular dump (asbestos must go to special EPA-approved dumps).

This has been law since the regs were enacted in 2009. FYI, the rule was developed under the Shrub administration and finalized right before Obama took office. Because it was such an unpopular shitshow of a rule, Obama delayed enforcement for a year and then ended up taking full blame when it hit the streets (kind of like Biden and Afghanistan).

Which isn’t to say the lead-safe rule isn’t necessary—it totally is. Lead in homes is an under appreciated epidemic in this country. But when I think of clunky rules that only serve to make the average person hate government, I think of this one. The EPA reg is a mess. Worse yet, it is different from lead safety standards required by OSHA or HUD. We don’t need fewer regulations — we need smarter ones and the lead-safe rule is the perfect place to start.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:22 PM on September 30, 2021 [19 favorites]

Now I'm even gladder that I had my garage door and opener replaced by a company whose entire business is garage construction. (Zero hassles. Worth every cent I paid.)
posted by humbug at 7:32 PM on September 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

I love the honest and beaten-down(?) Ernie at the end. He's just putting it all out there.

This is giving me some feelings because our garage has a ridiculous trench in the cement floor. (I'm on my phone and don't want to bother with details right now.) I've converted the garage to a workshop, and the trench doesn't make it unusable, but very annoying. We're going through the effort of finding contractors or garage specialists to figure out how to best deal with this and do the work, so I don't have to learn or rent anything. Someone came out for a visit in the morning and apparently got everything he needed in about 10-15 minutes of conversation, some pictures, and a few measurements, and he said he'd probably have an estimate for us by the end of the day. That was the Friday before Labor Day. They don't seem to be answering phones or emails anymore.

Well, back to the drawing board.
posted by cardioid at 7:50 PM on September 30, 2021 [9 favorites]

Oh this sounds very familiar. I have a Home Depot story from a few months back: I bought a washing machine; they failed to deliver it thrice; when I canceled the order, they wouldn't give me my money back until it was back in their possession even though they'd never delivered it to me. I had to do a chargeback with my credit card company. They're a *mess* and their customer service at the local store level is *horrendous*. The national-level customer service reps on the phone are nice, but they can't fix problems for you.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:51 PM on September 30, 2021 [11 favorites]

I hope things turn out well for Ernie, wherever he is.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:15 PM on September 30, 2021 [18 favorites]

I have a Home Depot story

We ordered a refrigerator at HD to be delivered to a house we were moving into at the bottom of a hill on an island, which would require moving the fridge down a long stairway. We were VERY clear with them that this was the case and described the driveway and the stairway because we didn't want them to get all the way out there, then decide they couldn't deliver the fridge.

Well.

Day of, my wife gets a call from the dispatcher at the delivery subcontractor. Her guys are already on the way back, being apparently too cowardly to call directly and admit that, having brought the refrigerator across a ferry and ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, they decided they couldn't possibly deliver it because of the policy about stairs. The policy that says they can't deliver if there are more than 30 steps.

We have 39 steps. WHICH WE TOLD THEM.

We eventually had the fridge delivered our old house (where we were staging for the big move anyway)—this entailed, yes, doing a return of the previous refrigerator and buying a new identical one from a different HD, with the usual delay on getting the money refunded—and having it delivered by the movers. The moving company assured me that movers, having ONE JOB, would find a way. Which they did.
posted by The Tensor at 10:57 PM on September 30, 2021 [14 favorites]

Not a big box store, nowhere as epic, but similar idea.

Way back when, about 10+ years ago, I was driving an Old Cutlass I inherited from my uncle. (Yes, that's how long ago). I live in Chinatown, and I park on the street. Overnight, it was broken into. I sighed and proceed to call a GM dealer for glass replacement (I was naive, okay?) They quoted me like 240. And it took 2 days. When I got the car back, I found a Safelite auto glass work order in the car.

I went straight to Safelite the next time it happened. Only took them 4 hours, and I'm pretty sure they got it done in 1.
posted by kschang at 12:58 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

"Then again, Jana, missed the hinge issue and she blew it on the lead paint too. But in her defense, she is consistent."

Yep... achieved comedy gold right here.
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:59 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Shared this story with my wife. She laughed, and reminded me about our own garage door saga… the second crew working on the door did it in under an hour, but the first guy? Took a full day just to mount one opener, and in the end it didn’t work because the entire garage was so rickety that it just shook and wiggled and then the damned thing ran out of clearance halfway to the open position.

(And yes, “the first guy” was me. In my defense, before the second crew came in, we paid a contractor to install a massive beam to fix the stability issues for the garage, and lifted the rafters up a full foot and a half in the process, neatly addressing the clearance problems.)
posted by caution live frogs at 5:37 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

In the before times - back before they were Trumps biggest pal I had both a water heater and a whole floor carpeted by the ‘Homeless Despot’ and it went without incident.

And by without incident I mean they dropped a water heater off at my HQ that one, I hadn’t actually yet paid for and two, it didn’t fit. But in a bit of luck the installer had a similar unit but shorter. I mean there was now a wall in way cause it was also wider. So i just cut down a whole wall out to make it fit and we had hot water.

Fun, but not as fun as having them come out 5 times
posted by zenon at 5:45 AM on October 1, 2021

“Well, it’ll cost thousands of dollars to have it tested,”

This is "I don't know how or care to deal with it" pricing. Should have called it there.
posted by bonehead at 6:21 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Strangely all our Home Depot installations on our little old house have gone off like clockwork. The couple of times I tried to do the right thing and go local all the way have been epic poems of avoidance, exaggeration, uncomfortable and kind of racist conversations, and once an invitation to a rock festival very far out in the country headlining the carpenter’s Guns N’ Roses cover band.
posted by acantha at 6:33 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is a beautiful example of why owning a house is a terrible idea that eats up your time, money and patience. Not for me!
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:44 AM on October 1, 2021 [6 favorites]

This brings back terrible memories of the time that we didn't have a bath or shower in our house for two months because the subcontractor on our bathroom renovation was fired for theft shortly after demo and then the contractor couldn't get its act together for over a month, so we fired him and had to bring in someone else to finish the job.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:15 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

My home is from before 1977, so I have to get it lead tested every time we do work which is often. It's a little swab, takes 5 minutes, and I guess the price is included because they never quote an extra charge.

Sometimes they use this
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:30 AM on October 1, 2021

You can scrape off some lead chips from a surface and have them tested for about $20 apiece.

Lead-based paint on a building surface does not make the demolition waste hazardous waste as long as it's adhered to the surface. If it's peeling or deteriorating/dusty, then you can do a different test ("TCLP") on the chips or dust for around $200 to see if it is required to go as hazardous waste or it can go into the normal municipal landfill.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:38 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Also, as some one who has dropped stuff off in a California landfill, Jana was right about that part, and that they don't really check for illegal materials.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:47 AM on October 1, 2021

This is a beautiful example of why owning a house is a terrible idea that eats up your time, money and patience. Not for me!

None of the things that went wrong with my rentals have cost me money (in the end--I have definitely had to pay out of pocket for shit and get reimbursed) but they have absolutely cost me time and patience, because I've never had a landlord who seemed remotely interested in making any repairs whatsoever and therefore I have always had to project-manage.

You would think someone might want to, you know, ensure that their very expensive property is not on fire, waterlogged, structurally unsound, and so forth but you would be, apparently, wrong.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:30 AM on October 1, 2021 [13 favorites]

None of the things that went wrong with my rentals have cost me money...but they have absolutely cost me time and patience,

Hard agree there. We own a house because we got fed up with our rental's owner (and the management company) being unwilling to fix the root cause of problems. Example: the soffits under the eaves on the back of the house were basically mesh. Squirrels chewed through them and established a home in the attic. We called the management company, who sent a guy out to repair the hole. The squirrels moved over a foot, chewed through the mesh again, and continued living in the attic. Three times this happened, and after that and a refusal to replace the mesh with non-chewable stuff, we found a real estate agent and started shopping.

In the end they didn't give us our security deposit back. We asked why. They said it was for carpet cleaning. The house had hardwood floors. Sigh.
posted by telophase at 8:41 AM on October 1, 2021 [5 favorites]

You would think someone might want to, you know, ensure that their very expensive property is not on fire, waterlogged, structurally unsound, and so forth but you would be, apparently, wrong.

I'm pretty sure it's because they know the person who has to sleep in it is even more motivated to ensure these things are managed well, and will pay for the privilege!
posted by pulposus at 8:48 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

...so I had the garage door guy out just last week, looking for an estimate for a replacement door due to a dent (in short, dent turned out to be dents and it isn't really repairable as the panels are no longer made). This story filled me with dread.

I'll give it to the person who arrived: he was open and sharing of items including the size door I need, just in case I want to price shop.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 8:49 AM on October 1, 2021

San Francisco… and it’s don’t change the look policies. While wasting time at work, I stumbled on to this video about a Victorian house in San Francisco that had a magic garage door. Rule #1: You can’t change the look of the building. Period. The ground floor had a big bay window facing the sidewalk. To the right was a stairway up to the front door. The video was amazing. A month later, a friend and I was in that neighborhood and we found the house. Bay window and all. And the owner was standing right outside. We told him about the video and he asked us if we wanted to see it work. Yes! He went somewhere and pushed a button. The bay window started slowly moving forward, split roughly in half, the two sides started to separate and move and fold and rotate left and right making an opening to reveal the garage. Then he pushed the button again and the bay window put itself back together and receded back into the house. You would never know there was a car behind it. The guy came back and said something about San Francisco, old houses, permits, and bureaucracy. I did not have the gall to ask how much THAT cost.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:52 AM on October 1, 2021 [20 favorites]

This is a beautiful example of why owning a house is a terrible idea that eats up your time, money and patience. Not for me!

It's even worse on a rental place (minus the money maybe) because you end up getting a range of time when the contractor might show up and then when they cancel they cancel with the landlord who might or might not show up.

Or the contractor shows up when you aren't home, demos the "wall", and then finds out they need to wait for something and just leaves the wall open for a couple weeks. Maybe puts some plastic up.
posted by Mitheral at 9:01 AM on October 1, 2021

njohnson23, is this the hidden SF garage door you're talking about? That's fascinating!
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:52 AM on October 1, 2021 [13 favorites]

YES!
posted by njohnson23 at 12:25 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

When Kevin didn't show up I was really worried he'd been killed by a garage door hinge.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:02 PM on October 1, 2021 [9 favorites]

None of the things that went wrong with my rentals have cost me money (in the end--I have definitely had to pay out of pocket for shit and get reimbursed) but they have absolutely cost me time and patience, because I've never had a landlord who seemed remotely interested in making any repairs whatsoever and therefore I have always had to project-manage.

You would think someone might want to, you know, ensure that their very expensive property is not on fire, waterlogged, structurally unsound, and so forth but you would be, apparently, wrong.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese


Oh, I completely agree. I have no washer and dryer (coin operated! $2 to wash, $2 to dry!) and have beem living with a crumbling shower wall for 10 months. Landlords don't care.

Still fucking GRATEFUL I didn't fall prey to buying a house. I actually stand a chance of improving my situation next year. If I had a house with these issues...no.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:40 PM on October 1, 2021

Quite similar experience getting a front door from Lowe's. Everything took 4x as long as expected and I had to go to Lowe's 4x more times than I expected. And each time the guy ostensibly in charge of the situation would involve me in long conversations about local sports, his health problems, other pressing matters of the day, and end up 20 minutes later explaining why they didn't have the part/had the wrong measurements etc. And lots of complaints about other people involved in the seemingly herculean task of installing my front door. It finally got done after about 3 months and it's almost (but not quite) right.
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:58 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm feeling relieved that neither of the home improvement behemoths were organized enough to have someone call me back / accept my calls about installing doors.

I'm handy, but buying a house was a fairly terrible idea. I had no idea how much work it is. Every significant project really will cost twice as much as you planned. I envy my friends who bought condos.
posted by momus_window at 4:01 PM on October 1, 2021

urghhhh I just went through this with Rona installation of a patio roof. About 15 phone calls, 2 months, 3 different contractors visited, each with their own reason why the roof couldn't be installed until I finally gave up and got my nephews to do it. They fired it up in half a day for half the money including buying them a nice dinner. And I got to listen in on them hilariously debate which anime characters were more powerful. Then it was another 4 months and hours of time on the fucking phone to finally get my money refunded, because of course they make you pay ahead of time. Rona sux. Awesome nephews rule.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:40 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, one day I will write a book about expanding my house to hold a blended family of six. It was to be an 8-week project, so we set the wedding date two months in. For seven months after the wedding, we had kids sleeping on the couch and on the floor. Reasons ranged from weather to the drywall guy's daughter being arrested for murder.
posted by Miss Cellania at 6:12 PM on October 1, 2021 [5 favorites]

I had one experience after we bought our house, just getting our house stripped for painting and some actual lead abatement stuff that it entailed. It was even a pretty well recommended outfit, not even form a box store. It was like quoted out as like a two worker job that was going to take two days and up to 10 workers It took more than a week, and they kept 'finding shit' that needed being done. I was both livid and super livid by the end of it.

At that point, I basically committed to learning how to do everything I can possible do on my house myself, well, to code and have pretty much stuck to it. I probably won't muck around with the gas line, or our 220 electrical lines, but I've done framing, plumbing and electrical work done to code and passed inspection. Finding codes is kinda fussy and a pain, but actually executing them is pretty chill. Like, a true tradesman would probably side-eye some of the work, just as messy or clunky or could have been done more efficiently, but that's cool. I take a great deal of (rare for me) personal satisfaction and security in knowing how to maintain the House Machine. There are loads of projects that I won't do unless i have to. It has a different bittersweet component to it that like a normal hobby does not nave. There are some jobs done that were a giant relief to have done, but I'd likely not do again if I had the choice. But there are also some really dope things that I have done that would have been prohibitively expensive had I farmed the work out. I would totally love to have the opportunity to build the bulk of a cabin or a house someday.

My white whale is trim. The last time I tried doing any trim the whole block learned new some new swears. Carpenters who do things like decorative trim or other fine finishing? Fuck dude. That's another goddamn planet.
posted by furnace.heart at 8:55 PM on October 1, 2021 [7 favorites]

Honestly, this sounds about like 95% of my experiences with home contractors, which has pretty much (like furnace heart above) resulted in me just doing the shit myself, with varying degrees of result.
posted by jferg at 7:29 AM on October 2, 2021

Carpenters who do things like decorative trim or other fine finishing? Fuck dude. That's another goddamn planet.
I am reasonably handy and a DIYer, but the compound cuts needed for making crown moulding joins at odd angles line up seamlessly make my head asplode.
posted by xedrik at 8:05 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

the compound cuts

A bunch of us helped a friend with new moulding recently, and as we set the saw up he yelled out "Don't get the angles wrong!"

"Right," we said. "Obviously we'll do the whole measure thrice cut once thing, compound angles are hard."


I think we cut the first angle incorrectly three time before he walked over to cut it a different, fourth, way... Which was still incorrect.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 3:44 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

I had the privilege to assist a fussy carpenter and we did some trim work. He had a very clever way of explaining how to do the cuts he needed and I was able to help him for one day with him catching me a few times before I did it wrong. I was so pleased with myself. I came back a week later to same job site without the seasoned carpenter and we had just a little more trim to do and I could not get it right to save my life. Me and another guy struggled through the last few pieces and it was a bear. Drives me crazy that I can’t remember what he said that made it click.
posted by amanda at 10:52 PM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

chekhov's garage door spring
posted by secretseasons at 8:33 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Can't help but throw in my own Home Depot horror story. A few years ago we ordered a new gas stove and dishwasher from them including installation. The stove was put in place but the gas line not properly secured, so you caught a whiff of gas every time you passed by (terrifying!), and the installer ran into a minor issue with the new dishwasher at which he shrugged and left it in the middle of the kitchen floor and walked out. I was 36 damn years old but seven months pregnant and utterly out of cope and I called my dad literally crying, who came over and finished the job inside of an hour, and my mom found a separate person who fixed the gas line in 15 minutes.

My neighbors are in the middle of their own HD saga involving patio furniture ordered three months ago, the particular set they chose specifically because it was already in stock and not backordered, but neither the store nor the shipping company can tell them where it is.
posted by anderjen at 10:14 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

We hired two dudes from Long Island to come out, frame, and install our garage door. They finished the entire job in about four hours, and charged us about 1/3 of what Home Depot quoted us, assuming we could rely on that quote, which we couldn't.
posted by 1adam12 at 3:02 PM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]