She Trusted A Friend With Her Home Renovation, So Now She’s Cleaning Up His Mess
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Have you ever started a DIY home renovation project and realized you didn’t have the time or energy to finish it? In that case, would you put off the project indefinitely, or would you hire someone to do it?
In this story, one woman is in this situation, and she ends up deciding to hire someone to do it. She assumes the job is simple enough that he can do it without any supervision, but when she later sees what he accomplished, she’s devastated.
Now, she doesn’t want to have him finish the project, but at the same time, she feels bad telling him he can’t finish the project.
What should she do?
Let’s read the whole story to decide.
AITA For Not Wanting My Friend to Keep Working on a House Project After He Messed Up a Custom Piece on the First Day?
For a little context. I am 30s F, disabled, and have owned a house for a couple years.
Last year I initiated a project with my uncle to rebuild the handrail in my house.
We took out the ugly old metal one and I got a bunch of nice hardwood pieces for the job.
But circumstances forced them to stop the project.
I was making alright progress, but then I got long COVID last winter and then my uncle got injured.
We’re both at around 10-20% capacity right now so I figured I’d need some help.
An old friend from high school recently got laid off and said he was looking for odd jobs, so I offered him some work for helping with the handrail, $20/hour whenever he can make it by.
He’s flaky for about two weeks and then finally shows up to help.
Yikes! It would’ve been better not to hire the guy.
I was working from home so didn’t have time to supervise the guy, just told him I needed two posts installed and one of them sanded and stained.
End of the day came round and he left early before I got out of work.
His tools were all over my house and yard, and I went out to find my $150 custom newel post had been sanded with scratches all over it and given a sloppy stain with run marks all over the top.
None of the posts were installed but there was a huge hole in my floor where one could be.
The friend seems completely clueless.
I’m kind of devastated honestly.
I have friends who would have given me better help for free and wouldn’t have trashed my house in the process.
It hurts knowing I paid a “friend” just to destroy my property and give me more work to do (I now have to re-sand and re-stain the newel).
The worst part is the guy seems to have no idea how badly he botched this and is asking when he can come back to finish the job.
She has yet to break the news.
I told him I was unavailable to supervise the next couple days but that he could come get his tools.
We don’t have a formal agreement on him being allowed to finish the job, and I explained I’d have to re-sand the newel.
I haven’t yet told him that because the only progress he made that day was messing up I do not want him working on the project anymore.
It’s a creative handrail and he was really excited about it, and he probably had to make rent etc next month, and I’m feeling guilty. AITA for wanting to call it quits with this guy after just one day?
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He messed up her project. Why would she allow him to come back to finish it? It would probably end up just creating more work for her.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
Here’s some advice.
Another person reassures her that it’s okay not to have him keep working on the project.
This person would end the friendship.
Nobody thinks she’s doing anything wrong.
It would be stupid to have someone finish a job that they seem incompetent to actually complete. He created more work for her. He won’t be able to finish the job. He’d just create even more work.
She should just hire someone else or wait until her uncle can help her finish what they started.
Hiring friends isn’t always a good idea.
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