Hey guys I am new here but I wanted to ask and get an opinion on this as we aren’t very handy ourselves.
My fiancée and I are finishing a lofted apartment area above a garage. We hired a family friend’s husband as our contractor and so far we haven’t made it far into the process.
He has torn down the old deck and put up a new extended one, which looks okay from what I can tell. However there are a few points on the stairs, especially the bottom step, that have splits in the wood. I am concerned that this may lead to loose boards or repairs needed later on.
Based on my one wood shop class in high school, I didn’t think this looked good, but like I said I am not very handy so I want a second opinion. Is this something I should have them fix or is this to be expected?
What did he say?
If he didn't notice that when he built it, he was fucked up. Either drunk or some sort of drugs.
If he noticed and didn't give a shit, that's just as bad.
But like, there's no way that acceptable. It's not safe now and will quickly get worse.
Are you getting permits and inspections? Is he licensed?
Like, I've done stuff without permits, I get it. But a lot of my extended family was in construction of some form and we knew what we were doing. These pics are exactly why permits are a thing. An inspector would/will make you tear it down anyways.
Mistakes happen, but just from the angle he's trying to screw in, he has no idea what he's doing.
Depending on how much work removing the old one was, maybe pay him something? But under no conditions let him build anything. You're lucky this was obvious.
Quick exit:
There's a lot more wrong just in the pic than the screw...
But that's what I mean, you can't trust anything he's done, it all needs to come out and start over.
I just took a look today and already messaged him about it but he hasn’t responded yet. He is licensed, hasn’t mentioned anything about permits, but my fiancée’s dad is the county building inspector which we have mentioned several times directly to him so he should know what to expect in that regard.
The angle of the screws was one of the things that threw me off the most, didn’t make sense why they were put in that way.
We already paid 60% under the contract requirements for ordering materials/beginning work. I feel like we might need to look at some other options based on what we have seen so far though.
Thanks for taking a look!
So are the two pictures from two attempts?
Why are the runners different?
Yup, one more in concurrence. Someone who's used an electric screwdriver and watched ~10min of YouTube videos would be able to avoid many mistakes showing here.
It honestly might be AI?
Like the top pic and the bottom pic don't add up. Either the pictures are of two different attempts or neither are actually real...
I have no idea why OP would bother faking it tho.
But the top pic only has the sideways screw on the left, the bottom pic has it on the middle. Unless OP did it himself and the top pic is before they put in the middle screw?
It's just all around weird
Quick edit:
The wood grain on the middle edge flips...
If it's not AI then it's two attempts complete with different runners.
Both the first and third stringer have damage.
Yeah, I wondered that briefly as well. One reason I didn't bother to elaborate on the problems, if it is an AI image I'm not going to help train it.