Barn Fiasco

Jet lag helps with rising early....at least, when you're coming off of Scottish time. 6 AM feels like 11 AM.

The contractors have been asking for money the whole time we've been out of town. They've been sending pictures and asking to get paid. We refused to do so until we inspected the work. There have been some other issues while we've been out.

Carrie's been soured on the whole experience. She's been dreading dealing with everything when we got back and she was right.

Carrie walked the fence line and started to measure it when she noticed a section missing from her drawing. I went out to help later on.

By her calculations, the fence line was over 100 ft short (~10%). The worksmanship was lacking.

From a photo or the street? Passable.

The moment you walked up to it and saw what it looked like? Fail.

It felt like the workers had thrown everything up as quickly as they could without quality control to get a check and cash out before anyone was the wiser. Carrie was able to shake the fenceline with a single hand. She stewed as it rippled like a wave in the ocean.

Carrie walked over to the posts that were supposed to anchor the electric fence lines. They wiggled, and she pulled one out with minimum effort.

They went anywhere from 14-18" down instead of at least 24" and used zero concrete. The contract specified concrete (There are other, perhaps better ways without concrete, but it was in the contract and this was none of those).

The barn wasn't done either. There were no latches or handles on most of the doors. Nails had been driven through to hold them in place and some still had nails sticking out of the door itself.

There was a sharp metal flashing around the outside that could easily cut a horse.

There was a stall door that couldn't be opened all the way due to the floor being unlevel and other issues I'm not mentioning here.

Carrie was crestfallen and furious (somehow). I had hoped that they'd make things right, but was proven wrong.

I have a video of her inspecting the arena I'm not going to post (reasons later). All of the retaining boards were on the wrong side of the fence. By mounting them outside, the arena gravel would push the boards away from the posts rather than pushing them into them. Again, the fenceline shook and swayed multiple posts down when Carrie shook it with one hand. A horse attempting to casually scratch it's butt could have collapsed a section on accident.

Grandma and Grandpa came over to help deal with the contractors when they arrived. They tried to bring some concrete to "fix everything," but we were past that point.

The contractor tried to claim everything was fine and serviceable and Carrie pulled out a post right in front of him. We walked over to the fence in the front yard and were able to lift the end post out of the ground and measure exactly how far down it was.

Carrie and her parents told them to walk. It was emotional. We paid what was left of the barn even though there were problems and told them we wouldn't pay a cent for the fence because it was unusable and would need to be redone. We couldn't even reuse the lumber, because the tops had been cut down to make them appear further in the ground. The contractor signed a paper agreeing to walk away and in return Carrie, Grandpa, and Grandma wouldn't post a video of the fence line and their work and blast them online (I never signed the agreement, but I won't post the video here. I will keep it in my back pocket just in case, though).

The whole process has been disappointing. We have a clean conscience because we've been clear the whole time and paid them for the barn even though there were problems and the work was lacking. We weren't trying to screw someone over to get a deal. We've had to pay at least an extra month's board for all of our horses (and probably two or three by the end of it) due to their delays.

It's been a big mess.

Carrie spent part of the day calling new contractors and trying to find a way to continue the work, so that her horses can come home eventually.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Apparently, the head guy was lying to the Amish guy about how much had been paid. The Amish guy called Grandma and asked how much was paid overall. When he heard, he dropped the Amish equivalent of an "Oh My _____! I'm never working with him again." The head contractor had been convincing him to pay for some materials even though we gave our first check back in December to get the project started.