Another one of thse horror stories was when I decided to have a friend make a slightly modified copy of a home entertainment center that was at a local store. The main mods were just to make it bigger in all dimensions, and to put outlets and pass through holes for wires and cooling in it. It was going to be done with Oak veneer over 1" plywood and Oak plywood, and faced with solid Oak, just like the original, and stained and varnished. It will hold a 37" LCD, all my other equipment, and 4 of the 5 the drawers on each side will each hold about 40 DVDs each, the other drawer on each side is for "junk". i used to have a link to the original piece, but it's been dead a long time now..
Now this guy does amazing work, it's as good as anything I have ever seen, regardless of price, but he's slow..to the max. He SWEARS it will be done in 3 months. I go over a few weeks later, and he's got quite a few parts cut out, and quite a few are ready to be cut. I think he's actually gonna get it done. Then, a whole lot of stuff happens. First, his dad has a stroke, and has to be moved to a nursing home. So there goes a couple of weeks, and I have no problem with it. Then, his wife decides they HAVE to go to Australia, where she is from, before Labor day. She's a teacher, so it makes sense, and there goes a couple more weeks. Then he's sick when he gets back, and then..
Well it's after Christmas, it's not much further than it was when I saw it, and I finally run out of patience with him, and tell him to forget it, I'll pay for the wood and stuff, and ask him how much for doing the job (I've known him for 45 years, and price was never really discussed before) to the point he was at.
He gets all insulted, and we get into a huge fight. We don't talk for a while, and then run into each other at the local car dealership while getting our trucks worked on. He swears it will be done by the end of summer. I say ok, great, I'll just sell the one I bought in the paper or something. It's a POS anyway, and cost me almost nothing.
So..summer rolls on by, his dad dies, and now it was close to thanksgiving, and I'm more amused than upset at this point. I go over and there's dust a mile thick on the same pile of parts I saw before, but there were two new pieces! WOW. They were Oak facings for the front, and must have taken all of 15 minutes to lay out and cut. I made a joke saying I'll be on Social Securtity before it's done, and off he went! I just left, never said a word.
That was 2004, it's STILL not done! He has cut out almost all the pieces, and the drawers are almost done (not stained or anything though). We are talking again, and his wife, as a birthday present to me, promises she will nag the hell out of him to get it finished.
Funny thing is, I can't use it now! It wouldn't even fit into the room I have my stuff set up in, and I don't have the money now to set up the living room like I was going to do it previously! So, if/when I do get it, it's probably going to be sold on ebay or something. I should get some decent money for it, but he's gonna flip when I tell him I won't be using it. I don't even want to think what it's going to weigh when it's all done. It's got to be over 700 pounds. My mother had a wall unit that was 680, and this thing is heavier and deeper. Just one 4X8 sheet of that plywood weighs a bunch! It's going to be in 3 "modules" that will have to be put together "on site". I may just have to tell him to stop and just build his kid a new PC as a gift to keep him from melting down.
