“Completely,” I Said

I am waiting for a guy to give me an estimate on fixing the garage door on the rental house. My general contractor wanted about $1800. I’m guessing a reasonable price would be more like $100.

The door has a big dent in one lower corner, and some of the support stuff behind it is bent. I don’t see $1800 there. The door does not have to be replaced. It just has to be repaired. Even if it were replaced, I believe the cost of a new door would be more like $800, based on Internet research.

When we agreed to hire the contractor, he assured me orally that the house would be completely ready to move in, once the things in his proposal were done. Little things like the $1800 garage door and the $1200 shower enclosure must not have appeared essential to him. He isn’t even including shower rods.

I refused to tell the garage people the price the contractor quoted me. I said I didn’t want to tell them it was ten dollars and have them come back with $9.50. Common sense.

I don’t like it when workers ask what other people bid. It’s an open admission that they’re trying to stick it to me. I know you’re trying to cheat me; be tactful about it. Or you could be totally forthright. You could say, “Are you stupid?” I could then say, “Not completely.” And you could bill me appropriately.

The contractor’s people are working on the house now. I assume they will be there when I show up to parade the new garage guy through. Will the contractor be upset? Ask me about something I care about. It’s not my job to give “safe spaces” to tradesmen who charge me money and deal with me at arm’s length.

This is how competitive bidding works. It’s not about feelings. I have to get that door fixed, and instead of including the job in the contract, the contractor surprised me with a bid. He started the bidding process, so he should not be offended to see it play out.

You makes the rules; you lives by the rules.

Now I have to fill the time until the garage guy contacts me.

The contractor also tried to charge $400 for a new toilet in the mother-in-law room. I went over to see what was wrong with it, and it worked perfectly. I sent the contractor’s girl an email asking what the exact problem was, and she said their plumber had unclogged it, but that it was still slow to fill. And of course, I care a lot about how long a tenant has to wait for a toilet tank to fill up. That toilet has been slow since 1945. Its performance will not shock anyone, and what’s time to poop?

Do I even have to say that this is bad customer relations?

If something isn’t broken, you don’t ask for money to fix it. If you think something is broken, and you ask for money to fix it, and then you fix it for nothing in two minutes, you tell the customer instead of hoping he goes ahead and pays you.

I could never give this guy a reference.

In other news, I have a big achievement to report. I have concocted my own daily shower spray. No, it’s not for me. Would that it were. It’s like Clean Shower, except it doesn’t cost three dollars per bottle.

I had been using soap scum remover and a sponge mop. It worked great, but it was a pain. I tended to get water and soap scum remover on my clothes, and it was just not a quality experience. I decided to get some daily shower spray and see what happened.

If you’re not familiar with this stuff, I will explain. You spray your shower every day (the manufacturer hopes), and the spray dissolves soap scum before it can form. Your shower never gets dirty enough to need scrubbing. In reality, you can spray less often and still win.

It worked great, but a bottle lasts three days. Even with laziness and missed days factored in, that’s $250 per year. Seems like a lot of money for shower spray. Also, the fragrance in some of these products is overpowering, and it fills your house. It’s like being hugged by 50 elderly aunts at once. You know those flowery perfumes older women love.

I found some online recipes. The problem is that recipes for substitutes for household cleaners are generally thrown together by people who are not chemists. They just guess. Sometimes they guess wrong, or they put superfluous stuff in their recipes.

I tried a recipe that had vinegar in it. I don’t recall whether it worked, but it made the house smell like salad, a thing I scorn. Fail.

I found another recipe. It contained dishwashing liquid, dishwasher rinse agent, alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide. It seemed to affect the scum, but it wasn’t as good as the real thing, and I wondered about those ingredients.

Hydrogen peroxide, in particular, looked dubious to me. Maybe it eats soap; I don’t know. But it struck me as the kind of thing a person would throw in there on a whim.

I also figured the alcohol was unnecessary. It’s just a solvent, and I have no reason to believe it works particularly well on soap.

I made a new batch when the first one ran out. I left the alcohol in, just because I like spraying things with alcohol. I removed the peroxide. I doubled the dishwashing liquid, and I kept the rinse aid. I also added six ounces of Zep no-scrub soap scum remover. The whole purpose is to dissolve soap scum, right? Why not use what works?

You’re on the edges of your seats, right? And you’re not even paying for this.

This stuff appears to work as well as the real thing, and I believe it’s pretty cheap. It will be cheaper still when I remove the alcohol. I use it every other day, and I have not had to scrub the shower in quite some time.

Here it is:

6 ounces no-scrub soap scum remover
1 tablespoon dishwashing liquid
1 tablespoon dishwasher rinse aid

Put this in a one-quart spray bottle and fill the empty space with water. That’s it. You just spray the shower walls and floor after you get out. The dishwashing liquid costs nearly nothing, and the soap scum stuff costs 20% of the price of a full bottle of same, or maybe 50 cents. The rinse aid is also cheap. So I guess this puts you at a total of around 75 cents. That puts your cost for spraying one big shower at what? About sixty bucks per year? ACCEPTABLE.

It’s not like scrubbing your shower is free. You have to use products for that. They don’t fall from the sky. If you can avoid scrubbing by paying sixty bucks, you have scored, my friend.

If I knew what was in soap scum remover, maybe I could bring the price down more. It seems to be diluted lye. Maybe I should use a small amount of oven cleaner instead of soap scum remover!

I suppose I could read the label.

Does it really matter if I pay $250 to keep the shower clean? Of course not, but you know how it is. I feel better about spending a thousand dollars and getting a good deal than spending two dollars and getting ripped off.

This is why I quit going to Five Guys. They charged me $16.34 for a burger, fries, and drink. I can afford that, but I can’t enjoy my food when I feel like a moron.

DISCLAIMER! DISCLAIMER! DISCLAIMER! I promise nothing. This spray may blind you and cause severe birth defects such as red hair, outies, and “fivehead.” I have no idea.

You will want to start with a clean shower, because this spray probably won’t have much effect on caked-on soap.

Now if I could just find a way to prevent my body from ejecting 5000 hairs onto the white tile floor every day.

I guess that guy will get here eventually.

More

The gigantic garage inquiry is over. The results are not exactly surprising.

The door does not need to be replaced. It has some mashed-up bits on the inside, where an idiot backed into it, but it’s not visible from the street. The lower part of the door can be screwed together to work correctly. Cost: 0.

There are some little problems with the opening system. It’s ancient, and the remotes have disappeared. The wall switch is gone, and so is the wiring. Cost to fix: $215. Cost for a whole new opener with remotes and switch: $300.

So, yeah, $1800 is a little high for a door for a one-car garage.

The city may get on its high horse (I think it’s glued there) and insist on a newer door that meets hurricane standards, but then again, it may not. If it does, it’s another $900. It may sound crazy, but my thinking is that it’s better to let the inspector have a look at the old door before assuming he’s going to condemn it. Either way, the worst-case scenario is a $1200 expenditure, not $1800. I realize contractors have to mark things up, but 50% does not seem reasonable.