u/can_of_crows

Does anyone have advice for materials (board and batten vs horizontal planks) and exterior color/design for our style home? It’s currently a barn red color and wasn’t well maintained so the siding, windows, and doors need to be completely replaced.

I have been avoiding white or light colors because the whole back of the house is south facing and it gets brutally bright back there in the summer. I didn’t prompt the colors or styles generated in these pictures, these are just some of the ideas we liked more than others. If the climate context helps, we’re located on Long Island so get both snow and humid, hot summers.

Posted without finishing the title, sorry 🫠
*I originally posted in Carpentry sub, but it was removed because apparently I should’ve posted here instead: https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/s/zTsEfLW2Yf*

We had a tight deadline to get some final renovations completed for our home and baby’s nursery room, and I hired out a company to install a new solid wood poplar door for our nursery room. Mr. Handyman of Huntington and Smithtown sent someone with 20 years of carpentry experience out and charged us $640 to install the new jamb and door. The final result is not what I expected for $640, especially compared to the two doors my husband (a novice to carpentry) had already installed himself (see the last 2 pictures).

The moment I saw the resulting work I called the company, but they didn’t even look at the pictures, spoke over us repeatedly, and insisted they’d only come out to “fix” this with wood filler and paint or would refund us only $80.

Aside from the way the door cuts look - and how our solid wood door now looks when the carpenter knew we planned to just poly and keep it unpainted - is there anything structural about the way the hinges have been cut that we should be aware of? Since the company is refusing to amicably resolve this, is there any advice for how we could navigate this?

We bought solid poplar doors from a consignment center and my husband had the intention of installing all of the doors in our hallway. He halfway finished two of the installations before we had some major life things come up and had to put the project aside. In the interest of just getting things done quickly because we were expecting a baby within a couple of weeks I hired a company that sent someone with 20 years of carpentry experience and the initial quote they gave me tripled on the spot. Since he was already here, I decided to just pay for one door to be installed for our baby’s nursery bedroom, just so it would be done. Then as the project is about to start, he says he doesn’t have a working router anymore and he has to go to Home Depot to pick one up and then eventually he ended up using my husband‘s router (he kept declining the jig my husband had made) and spent 5+ hours installing the new door jamb and door.

They charged us $640 the morning of the job when it was a rough initial quote of $240. I decided to just eat the cost because I was due in a week and we were trying to fully finish this one bedroom, and I expected the experienced professional would do a solid job.

The result was really disappointing and frankly kind of incredible compared to looking at the cuts my husband with no experience made. The guy who did the installation himself asked us not to paint the doors and keep them wood and stained/sealed which we already planned to do, but then he chewed up the wood around. If it was like one mistake or two, fine but the poor cuts plus having to redo the hardware door handle installation because he left out set screws all combined makes me feel robbed.

I tried talking to the manager/owner and sent her pictures, but she was frankly really defensive and rude and wouldn’t do anything more than refund $80. I’m prepared to just leave an honest review and chalk it up as a loss, but before I do I wanted to ask if my expectations were unreasonable.

The last two pictures are from the door done by my husband, the very first door that he ever installed and that was about what I was expecting for the tune of $640.

Edit:
Thanks for the feedback so far. We made a series of rookie mistakes by paying at all, and are definitely kicking ourselves but it was probably the worst week of our life in recent times:
- best cat ever in the hospital with our vet trying to save him, and I was spending hours there visiting him at 8.5 mo pregnant (cat ended up passing away the next day)
- I handed the project off to my husband to oversee so I could try to visit our cat and take a breather
- husband was trying to WFH but also managing a major project with our GC who called with news he had to delay it while the carpenter was wrapping up
- I had a planned C-section in 5 days and the nesting urge to just finish “enough” of the house clouded my priorities

🫠 we called the complain the moment I got home and saw it all but they wouldn’t work with us at all.
Sorry if that’s all unnecessary/TMI, trying to tread water over here.

Needless to say if anyone is on Long Island, I wouldn’t recommend Mr. Handyman of Huntington and Smithtown ☠️