A Cimex, Marble and Three Interesting Days...

A Cimex, Marble and Three Interesting Days
A short story as told by David Gelinas

I just completed an interesting three days.

I was referred buy two different people to a very pleasant, elderly woman. She just bought a condo with an existing travertine floor that is approximately 274 sq ft. The two things she didn’t like was 1) although none of the lippage was very heavy, nearly every tile had at least some degree of lippage and 2) she did not like the unevenness of the appearance of the travertine, being a filled stone. What she hired me to do was completely flatten the floor and leave it with a honed finish. Her thought was that a honed finish would hide the inconsistencies of the stone.

After spending two days with a helper, and doing a job that I was very proud of and had gotten complements from her neighbors, I call the woman to come and inspect the job and ultimately pay me the more than $2300 that I was charging her for this work. She came in, took one look at the floor and said she ABSOLUTLY HATED IT. Needless to say that was not the response that I was expecting, not to mention, right about this time I’m getting pretty curious about this invoice I’m holding in my hand. At the same time she’s telling me what a good job that I did and how much she appreciated all the attention to detail booth in the floor work and all of the prep work. But she wants to know how I’m going make her happy with this floor. I explained to her how travertine is and that whether it has no shine or a high shine, it will always have variations in it. Her complaint was that it looked “dirty”. I told her that most people equate shinny with clean and if she wanted, I would be able to give the floor a decent shine. It turns out that she not only gladly paid the first invoice but she also gladly paid the second one also for just over $1100.

Not to bad for three days worth of work. I wish I could have more good paying, indecisive customers.

And we all lived happily ever after, the end.

David Gelinas