Here in italy the level of workmanship in general is very low.
pseudo-communism makes the working class pretentious and arrogant with what seems to be a repulsion for doing the job right.. I have the feeling people do things 90% on purpose because the last 10% is too much to offer..
I hired someone to fix up my 1844 broadwood piano and I am basically spending days every month fixing this guy's mistakes. this is a guy who's been repairing for 30 years and he's already almost ruined the piano with his makeshift attitude.
I had to go in the shop and physically participate with chisel in hand to re-do part of the job which was done absolute shit as far as I am concerned.
finally after a year, after I bought the strings, sourced the parts etc. because he is too incompetent in the matter he has finally strung it up.
now WE are waiting for some mahogany hammer shafts which he said didn't exist anymore, but that I found through HIS supplier, and then the action will be ok, hopefully I can get the piano home.
the man claimed he could repair the piano, but his concept of repair is too makeshift and approximative for my taste.
there is one instance where he didn't have the proper clamp to glue two braces together so he drilled through one and used a screw to draw them together, leaving a hole to be filled with a plug.. why didn't he go out and buy the proper clamp?
all of my intervention is being done TRYING not to hurt the guy's feelings, to get the guy to finish the job..
he has done a good job on the traditional stuff like shimming the soundboard and making the bass strings but the rest was really rough work.
instead of steaming or unglueing with warm water he just pried the wood apart wherever he needed to dismantle..
my problem is that I had no idea that such a simple job would have been such a big problem, so I had nothing written down such as an estimate etc..
I must say that when I gave the piano to him I knew nothing about those pianos but now I know more than him in many respects and he's the one who said it!
hopefully now the job will be finished, although NOT exactly like I wanted because of his rough handling, and I will have to pay him..
I'm not sure if I should pull the price down for the work that I had to do, or I'll have to do in the future to hide the defects which he caused..
what would you do?
this is bothering me for a while.
