Sixteen Feet

The sliding glass doors in our house in Florida are very beautiful. They form one wall of our living room and look out first, to the lanai, and then to the garden and pond. Very nice. When we first moved in, the hanging piece for the sliders was covered by a very large fabric covered valence. The valence fabric was a pink floral number.

Of course my decorating goal for the house was to "embrace the green and blue and suppress the pink. That floral fabric valence had to go! But what to replace it with? I had the brilliant idea of simply (simply--hah!) having the behemoth valence replaced with a simple wood cover which would be the same material and color as the walls. It would "fade out" and not impede our beautiful view.

The first contractor I discussed my brilliant idea with stared at me at some length and then did, what I would call a "lift quick quick" which in the old aerobic dancing parlance was a term for skipping backward. He professed not to have a clue how one would build and mount such a valence. Perhaps I should have stopped right there.

The second person I asked had someone in mind he thought would be stupid enough to do this project. I called "Jeff," who turned out to be a sad little man. He looked at the 16 feet of valence and said it would be no problem. I mentioned to him I was very concerned that we not see the mounting hardware for the valence. "Oh no," he assured me, "I can hid it behind. No problem."

All I can say, is that I listened and hired the guy. Why did I do that? I thought he would be my hero of the valence.

Jeff came back about a month later and installed the valence. Really, it looked beautiful. Except, of course, for the huge metal brackets that he used to mount it. Now, if you were making a valence whose sole purpose it was to cover the brackets used to hang a 16 foot curtain, don't you think it would make sense that the brackets used to hang the bracket cover wouldn't also show? In fact, not only did the new brackets show, the old ones did too. Now, there's a successful project for ya!!!

I had to go back to Albany. But, before I left, I called Jeff and asked him to come back and do something to fix the bracket/bracket showing problem. He agreed. I told him I would call home watch and set up a time for them to meet him at the house so he could get in and fix the problem. Again, he agreed. So all was set up. Unfortunately, at the agreed upon date, I got a call from a fuming home watch person. She had been sitting for half an hour waiting for Jeff, who didn't come.

I called Jeff and he said he had something else to do that morning. I mentioned that I was actually paying someone to sit in my driveway waiting for him to show up and he agreed that it would, under the circumstances be a good idea to actually show up. Home watch then called to tell me they had let Jeff in and were leaving. The plan was for them to return later in the day and take a picture for me of Jeff's work.

Unfortunately (and why else would this be a story if something unfortunate hadn't happened?)the photo was of the front of the valence and I couldn't tell what Jeff did. No worry. When I got to Florida the next time, a few months later, I could see that although Jeff had actually showed up, and had entered the house, Jeff hadn't actually done anything to fix the problem.

Next step was to call the person that suggested Jeff in the first place. After all, if someone suggests someone who didn't work out very well to do a job, don't you want to ask that same suggester for another person who could correct the problem? Of course. So, the suggester, we'll call him "Sean" said he would fix the problem himself. This was after a thousand weekly phone calls that he didn't answer. But, in time, he showed up at the house with a 16 foot fix.

Sean installed a cover over the brackets. It was a simple plan. I didn't like how the screw holes were covered, but this was a minor problem. It looked fine. I paid him. The next morning it was time to rush out of the house and fly home. During the rush, I attempted to close the blinds over the sliders. These were the blinds whose brackets were being covered by a bracket cover, which was then covered by Sean. Unfortunately, the blinds were rubbing on the new board and wouldn't close. I finally got them closed but they were no longer hanging correctly, with several panels hanging every which way. In other words, the bracket cover for the bracket cover seems to have messed up the 16 feet of blinds (which would cost about $4,000 to replace).

So, I called Sean and left a message about the problem with the bracket cover. He never called back. Really, I can't blame him. After many sleepless nights, I called a new contractor, and to lure him out to the house, I added in a few other small projects to pique his interest. Now this was a smart man. Instead of removing the lovely cover for the brackets for the bracket cover (you know what I mean), he simply moved the curtains out about an inch and reinstalled them. They didn't rub any more on the bracket cover and that was the end of the nightmare. He was, in fact, my hero for the at least that day! Although I admit that I often worry about the darn thing falling down, it's been quite some time now and it hasn't fallen yet.