Fitting Bi-fold doors - help (long)

[John]

I do many things DIY but joinery isn't one of them so I got a joiner in to fit two sets of bi-fold doors for us, which he fitted by hinging (sp?) the doors on the side just as you would do with any other door.

I have to admit that I didn't realize that this was "wrong" as we've never had bi-fold doors before but when I went into a neighbour's house recently, their bi-fold doors ran in a track along the top of the opening and a sort of pivot at the top and bottom of the door at the "fixed" side (iyswim). My wife then rang a friend and found out that hers also ran in a track.

I went to a local timber place to look at the doors they had on display and they were all in tracks too and the guy said that that was the correct way to fit them - any joiner should know that, he said - and it should only take about 20-30 minutes to fit. So, I bought the track and diplomatically suggested to the joiner [1] that perhaps he may have done it wrong and would he please fit the doors on the track.

Next thing, he's ringing us saying that it took him *3 hours* to fit (at £10/hour, mind you), the track needed "opening out a bit and oiling" before it would work smoothly. And, of course, the doors now have "cut-outs" where he located the hinges, that he shouldn't have fitted in the first place, and has now removed.

It's not the first mistake either. He botched up some skirting and we had to tell him it was unacceptable. He didn't seem too bothered when we asked him to change it - he just cheerily said "OK" and got on with it. But there's more work to do and therein lies the problem.

Explanation of [1] - I've known the joiners dad for 25 years and he's a good friend of mine. He's done good work in his dad's house, so that was good enough for me. Trouble now is that if I complain or fire him off (which I feel like doing), that's going to cause hassle between me and his dad and I don't want that.

What would you do?

TIA, John.

[Lurch]

On or around Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:05:31 +0100, "John" mused:

I'd have done the job myself in the first place. As the old saying goes, "if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself".

Obviously that doesn't help you much.

If I was in your situation and if he really is as incompetent as you say I would have no problem with telling him straight.

[Owain]

I would have a quiet word with his dad, if you know him well. (And if he's not a lot bigger than you.)

And I'd let him keep the £30 for the time he spent hanging the doors first time round, because it is *one* way of hanging bifold doors (they just flap about, which the track prevents) on the grounds that you didn't tell him what you didn't know you wanted, and £10 an hour for a joiner is fantastically cheap when Aldi pay £7 on the tills.

Can the edges of the doors be planed down to remove the hinge cutouts, and the loss made up with a shim of ply added to the jamb (which will hide the cutouts there too)?

Alternatively, forget the bifold doors and ask the Mrs. to run up a nice curtain on her Singer Treadle.

Owain

[jim_in_sussex]

This is very interesting, as finished installing bi-fold doors (Wickes Edwardian) a couple of hours ago and am completely dissatisfied with the result and consequently am wondering about how to hang them in the same way as your joiner did first time!

Snags with the pivot fitting are the large gaps all round the frame, and the doors do not fold flat into the door opening. One of the ideas behind using bifold was to 'hide' the open doors inside the rather thick wall the doorway goes through.

Wish I'd looked around more before starting!!

Anyway any ideas about achieving a more satisfactory result would be most welcome.

If they could be hung so that they normally lie flat in the opening or could be swung back and fold against the wall outside the room (perhaps via some sort of double direction 'restaurant' hinge) to leave the full door frame width clear, then that would be brilliant.

[Chris Bacon]

Wrong? Why is it wrong?

Some are hung like that - some are not.

A tenner an hour? You're trolling.

[John]

Why do you think I'm trolling? As I said before, I've worked with (and been friends with) his dad (and so, by association, with him) for about 25 years (joiner is 26) and he's doing this as a foreigner, not self-employed rates. He is a time served joiner and he's fitted a new kitchen for us which is absolutely brilliant. I have no qualms about his kitchen fitting skills at all, which is why we then asked him to do the other jobs.

However, when he attempted the skirting (replace as and where necessary), everything seemed to go to shit. One wall of the back bedroom never had a skirting but a pipe box. When that (and the redundant pipes) were ripped out, he only needed to provide a skirting to match the existing three walls. However, for some strange reason he decided to "box in" (the perfectly alright) skirting on the wall opposite (as per photos 1071, 1067, 1064 and

1074).

The wall that used to have a pipe box was given a 5"x1" (or whatever) "plank" - not even proper skirting such as Taurus or Lamb's Tongue - as per photo 1069. And photo 1070 is replacing a section of skirting in the front bedroom.

Hence my apprehension regarding the bi-fold doors. My dillema is as much a moral one as a physical one - I don't want to upset my mate of 26 years but neither do I want crappy work like this.

Would you pay £10 per hour for that?

Photo's here

[mrcheerful]

If he is only charging ten pounds an hour, then obviously you have not found a first rate joiner/carpenter, but a chippie. A good carpenter will charge about three times that per hour (or more).

mrcheerful

[Ian Clowes]

Hi John

I think that at the heart of it, kitchen fitting and general joinery are quite different things, unless he's fitting bespoke, solid wood kitchens. Some of the tools are the same, but I think much of being a good joiner is learning the various tips, tricks and almost nuances that make doors swing properly, scribing rather than mitering skirting, etc. Modern kitchen fitting has its own tricky parts, but they're different ones.

The skirting looks so odd it's hard to believe there hasn't been some misunderstanding. When you said 'we'd like this wall to look like that one' has he got the idea that thinks he's been asked to make a boxed section all around? Is it worth revisiting the plans, or popping down to Jewson with him to pick out what you actually want/need?

Whatever you are, you'll have a different dynamic in the relationship than he does with his dad. What type of person are you? Do you give precise directions that some people hate because they squash their creative spirit, but everyone grudgingly knows where they're going? Or a conceptual type that kind of knows the desired endpoint but has no particular plan or care as to how you get there, and also think its fine (and indeed appropriate) to adjust the job as it goes?

Is the lad's heart in the work? Without knowing the circumstances I can imagine he feels obliged to help out where you/his dad have asked but may be well aware himself that this type of work isn't his forte. Are you sure it'll trouble his dad? He might be saying to his dad every night that he's looking forward to the end of this job. Did you have to mention this more than once to get him along, perhaps masking an unstated belief on their side that he'd be better off not involved?

At it's simplest, assuming he has regular work elsewhere, if you were in his (relatively) young shoes would you rather be earing an extra £10 per hour, or enjoying yourself somewhere else? Does he have the time to make a good job, or is he having to make do with what he can grad fron Do It All on the way home?

A couple of ways out:

- Tell him you're rethinking the designs, and could do with a break to get your thoughts straight before carrying on. You could use this to test if he's really interested in carrying on in (say) a month, or feels his own work might get busier (hence letting him slip away at his own choice). If you do this you shouldn't keep him hanging on for the work (although if he's desperate for the money there are ramifications to all get out plans...).

- Ask him straight if he feels up to finishing the job and/or is getting satisfaction from it. It might just clear the air all around, expose issues, etc.

- Get him and his dad over one w/e to motor through the planning and execution of the skirting (and a couple of beers)?

- Ask him to put fitted (Sharps style) bedroom furniture in. Sounds like he would make a good job of that, and all would have a happy ending to mask any earlier troubles.

Lot's of mutually incompatiable thoughs in the above. As you know all involved better you'll hopefully be able to pick at least one useful thing from it.

HTH IanC

[Andy Hall]

There's a few clues here but some missing information as well:

- He's 26, so although a "time served joiner" may not have had the business experience on what jobs like this should cost when he did the kitchen but now does rather more?

- He did previous good work but this job is rubbish

- He appeared to stretch out the work perhaps in order to get more money.

This, to me suggests on the face of it that perhaps he's feeling short changed. £15-20 per hour would be a more reasonable rate for quality work.

The unknowns are:

- Perhaps his dad leaned on him to do the job as a favour for a friend (implying low price)

- Perhaps he didn't want to do the job but felt obliged

- Perhaps he had a row with wife/girlfriend.

etc. etc.

Clearly the job is unsatisfactory. As I see it, there are four choices apart from doing it yourself:

- Chalk it up to experience and get another joiner in to do the job on a commercial basis. Then you can be hard about it if need be.

- Talk to the son as though it's a commercial job and tell him you're not happy.

- Talk to the son on the basis that you know it was a son of a friend job, but that you aren't happy. Be prepared to pay him for the additional time to do a proper job, or ask him for an estimate on how long it would take and meet him part way on the cost. This gives him the opportunity to offer to fix at no extra cost or to indicate that the price wasn't right in the first place. There may well be a moral issue on his side as well, so if he agrees to fix for nothing or at some level between that and commercial price, I think that that is a satisfactory outcome. Everybody should feel happy at the end of the day.

- Talk to his father about it. The risk there is that if the son did the work under some level of pressure from his father (which could be the case), you will have made the situation worse. The son might do it even more grudgingly (if that was the issue) or not at all. Then you have created an awkward situation for your friend.

What should have happened is that the job should have been done on an arm's length basis (whether for cash or not) in the first place. Now I feel that the options are to drop it with him and get somebody else to do it and say nothing more to the father or son, or to talk to the son. Talking to the father is not the way to go, IMHO.

[John]

Thanks very much for that Ian - a good reply and lots of food for thought there.

Before asking him to do the job I jokingly asked his dad "Is your lad a good joiner? Would you let him loose in your house?" He laughed and invited me round for a beer that night to see the kitchen and wardrobes that his lad had recently finished fitting for him.

When I saw his work I was well impressed and on the strength of that, I asked him if he was interested in doing our job - a victorian mid-terraced that's being completely renovated (rewire, replumb, new bathroom, CH etc). "No problem", he said, "I'll do whatever you want for £10/hour".

I thought the phrase "replace skirting as and where necessary" was fairly self-explanatory. By the time he started the job the old pipes and pipe box in the back bedroom had been ripped out so he was looking at three "normally" skirted walls (with 3" skirting) and one wall with nothing on that needed matching to the others, so I haven't got a clue as to how he could think he was asked to make a boxed section all round.

I now think that you're correct in saying that kitchen fitting is different from other areas of joinery/carpentry and I can only assume that the local (big) building firm have him fitting kitchens all day long.

Anyway, thanks again for your comments Ian (and everyone else, of course)

John.

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Well there may be the problem. £10/hr is not an viable rate for a craftsman. I would be surprised to find anyone working for £10 an hour self employed.

Pay a craftsman to do it in future.

[John]

He's not doing this at self-employed rates. He works full time for a local building firm and he's doing this as a foreigner at "mates-rates" because I've worked - and been friends with - his dad (and by association, with him [he's 26]) for 25 years - hence my moral, as well as physical, problem!

John.

[manatbandq]

Yeah, I ditched all the tracking and fitted two bifold doors (ie 4 panels) to an opening as though they were normal doors with no gaps. You can open the centre two panels right back flat against the outer panels for a normal door sized opening or you can open all four panels but they don't open flat against the wall in our case.

Flush door bolts e.g.

the top and bottom hold 3 of the 4 panels firmly closed. Make sure there's actually enough wood in the doors to take them.

MBQ