Holey Experience for Handyman

There are two things I remember about that day in May, one was when I saw the condition the vandals left Ernie’s apartment building. The other happened later that day when “Charlie Hustle” Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds got his 3,000th major league hit. I confess, I did not live in Cincinnati at the time, I lived in a city on the east coast that did not have a major league ball club, and it was hard back then not to be a fan of the “Big Red Machine”.

That morning I met Ernie at the apartment to give him an estimate on the repairs. Out of the ten units only two had escaped the vandals. What I found was evidence of someone going crazy on the apartments with a pool cue. All of the light fixtures in the eight apartments were broken in pieces on the floor, fortunately no windows were damaged. The biggest problem was all of the 3 to 6 inch holes that had been knocked in the walls with the pool cue. Every sheet of drywall had at least a few holes. I found the pool cue sticking through a wall with one end in the living room and the other end in the bedroom.

It was Friday morning and Ernie had a deadline to get the painters in Monday. I told him that there was no way that could happen. He said that the insurance company had estimated the repairs based on removing and replacing all of the drywall in the eight units. He continued to tell me how much the estimate was and what the insurance company was going to give him. I was standing there thinking, “that is a lot of dead Presidents”, and before I could say anything he made me an offer. His offer was; that if I could patch the drywall and have it ready to paint on Monday, he would give me the whole insurance check. Patching the drywall was going to be a lot cheaper then removing all of the old drywall and putting up new, and I could make a lot of coins, but Monday did not give me much time. Yes, you are correct I did take the job, and thanks to the butterfly everything worked out great.