Gratuity?

The Tile Guy said his goodbyes today and left us with a final bill that was 30% higher than originally estimated. Just last week, a coworker was telling me that you have to add 30% to any estimate for home renovations because that is how much it is going to cost you in the end. The funny thing is that she was just kidding around. So Joel calls me at work and says that the Tile Guy is clearing out his stuff. He wanted to know if we should add anything for tip. Poor Joel. He thought that we got to subtract what we had already paid for the tile. Nope.

We offered to give the Tile Guy pictures of the bathroom after we finish painting and stripping the wood from around the door frames and the window sill. The Tile Guy keeps a portfolio. I am interested in looking at it. He offered to show it to us when he stopped by to give the original estimate. At the time, I didn't push to see it. Now I am really curious. I want to know how our bathroom ranks in terms of asthetics compared to the neighbors. In other words, did we just shell out megabucks for a mediocre looking bathroom?

It's hard to tell what Marilyn thinks of the bathroom. She says the tile is lovely. But she keeps mentioning how she has never bothered to repaint a single wall in her house (bought in 1971). Only a few months ago did they redo their floors for the first time. They had carpet in their livingroom that was originally installed in 1957! Marilyn was having work done in her kitchen when a worker discovered that there were beautiful hardwood floors underneath that carpet. He convinced her to tear out the carpet, which she was loathe to do at first. But now she says that she can hardly remember what it was like to have carpeted floors. The woman who never touched a paintbrush to a wall in all of her 70+ years has just taken her first step toward a long fall down the slippery slope of renovation projects. Once one room is redone, all the other rooms look like they need a facelift as well! She is now thinking about replacing the carpet in her entryway with tile.