The Florida Keys House Railing Story

2005*

This story should be called the 4000 easy steps in doing a renovation project in the Florida Keys.

This story was Re-written 05/03/2016. 2,826 Words

This is a true story about what we went through to get an aluminum railing installed on our home at 160 Palo de Oro in the Florida Keys. It all took place in 2005.

By Howard Yasgar

In September of 2001, my wife and I purchased a beautiful waterfront property located in Venetian Shores.

Venetian Shores is a development located on the island of Islamorada in the Florida Keys.

When we bought the property, we knew that every square inch of it needed to be renovated.

That included everything, on the property, even the seawall, and landscaping, they were all in a terribly neglected condition.

We bought the property because its location was perfect, it was a large corner property that was 100 feet long by 100 feet wide, one of the largest in Venetian Shores.

Back in 1967, the properties original owner had, illegally added fill to the property making the lot size much larger than any other lot in Venetian Shores.

The rear of the house overlooked “Snake Creek”, which is the main waterway that boats need to use when traveling to or from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

So not only were we able to watch all the boats going by, but we could also see the Snake Creek bridge on U.S. 1, when it was opening and closing.

The house was built in the “Art Deco” style, but in 2001, however we felt that an Art Deco style no longer suited the Florida Keys, we felt that changing the house to a Mediterranean style would be more appropriate.

When we bought the property we had assumed that there was going to be no shortage of contractors, and craftsmen available in the Keys to assist us in the renovation.

We also thought the trade people in the Keys would be anxious to want to work with us on such a large renovation project.

Both those ideas turned out to be erroneous assumptions on our part.

The first architect we hired, we had to fire after just three months, as he had done nothing except take a deposit from us.

Once we started talking to other homeowners in the Keys, we were warned about the “Keys Disease”, a term used when you hired local workers and they failed to show up or fail to do what they had promised to do.

We had never experienced anything like Keys Disease before, so when it happened to us we were kind of surprised.

Also, once we found a contractor to work with us, we found that overcharging for materials was also a common practice in the Keys.

All the Keys contractors knew that most of the homeowners in the Keys didn’t live in the Keys full time, so the contractors took advantage of the situation by jacking up the prices as high as they could.

In our case, we soon found our contractor was working in collusion with the local suppliers.

How their scheme worked was simple, the hardware supplier overcharged the customers, then gave back some money to the contractor.

One local hardware company rewarded the contractors with free vacations in the Bahamas or Mexico.

We found it was quite a racket they had going.

It wasn’t long before we realized that getting anything done in the Keys was in many ways worse than trying to do a project in a foreign country.

Not only that, but because we were living in Miami, it really compounded all our problems, as we were not able to be on the property every day to watch and see that the work was being done properly.

For a while we thought we could try solving the problem by bringing qualified workers from Miami to the Keys, but we soon determined that the travel time to have them come to the Keys from Miami added too much to the overall costs.

Also, we eventually found out that very few, if any of the Miami Cuban contractors had Workman’s Compensation Insurance, which is required to work in the Keys.

So, because of that, and several other complications we ran into, it made every project we did on the property a problem worthy of writing a book about.

The “Aluminum house railing story”, that I am going to relate to you is just one of several stories about our renovation project, and this is how the aluminum railing story started.

When all the exterior concrete construction and tile work had been done, and a new third floor had been added to the house, it was now time for us to think about doing the exterior and interior railings.

The original house, built in 1967, had railings made from 1-1/4-inch iron pipe that were welded and then painted silver. However now, the Iron pipe railings would no longer meet current Keys code requirements, so it all had to be removed.

Once that was done, my wife Katherine and I started driving up and down all the streets in Venetian Shores, we were looking at all the different styles of aluminum railings.

We were not only looking for a Mediterranean style, but also a style that we liked.

We felt that if we found a railing we liked, we could always find out who did the work and call them.

After a couple of weekends of looking around, we didn’t find even one railing we liked, but we did get a lot of ideas.

We found that the Mediterranean style railing we liked was called birds breast, and it came in many different shapes.

However, what we didn’t like was seeing that the railing installers used metal screws and hardware to fasten their railings down.

You would think the Keys railing installers would be smarter, but they weren’t, they all used iron screws that eventually rusted in the salt air, and all the rusty hardware eventually left ugly brown stains on the houses.

Now, regarding our contractor, this is the way he worked, whatever we paid to a subcontractor, he would add on an 18% percent commission on for himself, so the higher the price we paid anyone, the better it was for him.

We found that he would always try to push us to do business with his own friends as they were all companies that would also add a hefty commission for the contractor besides his 18%.

Our contractor brought us to several Keys railing companies, and he said we could pick out any style of railing we wanted from their catalogs.

What we found was that all the railing stores only carried ready-made railings.

They simply ordered them and bolted the sections together, using cheap hardware that rusted, none of the railing stores were making the railings themselves.

For these totally uninspired railings they wanted an outrageous $80,000.00, from us, which

probably included a $20,000.00 or more commission for our contractor.

Not only that but the end results would be that our house would just look like half the other houses in the Keys.

We knew what we wanted, a Mediterranean bird breast design that didn’t look like everyone else’s.

We soon found that all the Keys railing companies would automatically jack up the prices as soon as they knew that we were with a contractor.

After we turned all of them down, our contractor then introduced us to another one of his buddies, he was a fellow that did fabricate and weld railings, but when I saw examples of his welding, I felt that the quality was so poor, I would have been crazy to even consider using him.

Eventually we came to feel that we would never be able to find what we wanted in the Keys, so we again started looking at railing fabricators in Miami.

We asked around, but we didn’t find anyone in Miami that was interested in doing the job.

But what we did find was a sample of the bird’s breast railing that my wife Katherine liked.

Once we had found the correct style, we were able to draw the style of railing just as we had envisioned it.

Katherine and I were wearing ourselves out talking to so many different people about doing the railing.

Before we knew it, several months had passed still with nothing happening.

I again measured the entire house, and I determined for certain that we needed over five hundred linear feet of aluminum railing, and that was just for the exterior walkways, then we also needed aluminum railings for two third floor balconies.

Besides all the exterior aluminum railings, we also needed a considerable amount of iron railings for the interior of the house.

The interior iron railings were to be painted white, with two feet tall colorfully painted coconut palms mounted on the railing every few feet apart.

As time passed, every free minute I had was spent calling or visiting railing fabricators in Miami, but none were anxious to do our railing project.

One day, one of our former employees named Hector stopped by our Miami office to say hello.

Hector was a Cuban refugee who had worked for us for several years, and he had learned how to weld aluminum.

Over the several years that Hector had worked for us, he had quite a few altercations with fellow employees, and he had developed a reputation for being a hot head.

While we all liked Hector, when he said he was leaving us to work elsewhere, no one tried to stop him.

So, when I saw Hector’s truck in our parking lot, I knew he was there visiting some of his old friends at our company.

I asked Hector what he was doing for a living, since he left us, and he said, “I’m making and installing railings.”

I couldn’t believe it, so I said, Hector, do I have a project for you.

I proceeded to tell Hector all about the railing project we had at our house in the Keys.

Hector said he would come down to the house and look the project over, so I invited him to come down to see us the following weekend.

Hector spoke very little English, but he came down with his lovely wife who was bilingual and she spoke fluent English.

We explained to Hector about how we wanted our Mediterranean design railing done. It was to be welded, and painted in white powder coating.

We also said that all the railing supports were to be imbedded into the concrete with no metal hardware used anywhere.

Hector said he understood perfectly, and he proceeded to measure inside and outside of the house.

The following week Hector came to our office in Miami with all his prices.

He said he needed $13,000.00 to buy materials, he would need another $13,000.00 for installation and then another $13,000.00 for his profit.

I asked Hector when he could start the project, and I told him that I would write him a $13,000.00 check to buy all the aluminum that very day.

About thirty days passed, and it was a sunny Saturday morning when Hector arrived with the first group of five, six-foot-long sections of new powder coated birds breast aluminum railing, exactly as we had designed it.

Hector also brought an assistant with him named Miguel.

I also saw that they also had brought along a brand-new boring concrete machine to drill mounting holes just like we had asked him to do.

Hector and Miguel arrived around ten thirty in the morning and it took around three hours for them to drill several holes in the concrete and install the five pieces of railing.

Around two in the afternoon they opened their cooler and broke out the Heinekens.

After a few beers, they then assembled their fishing rods and went fishing off our seawall. Sometimes, when my wife and I were sleeping, we would wake up as Hector and Miguel were leaving our property, it was usually around two in the morning.

Hector and Miguel followed this same routine every weekend until almost half the railing was completed.

We knew that doing the railing project was taking a long time for them, but we were happy to see the railing was getting done.

One Saturday morning, Hector’s wife called.

She said, “Hector had been in a minor car accident on the Florida turnpike, she said, it was really nothing, and Hector would be back to work the following week.

We patiently waited, but two weeks passed without Hector showing up.

After three weeks passed, I noticed Hectors truck was sitting in front of our Miami office building again.

It appeared that Hector had stopped by to say hello to some of his old friends.

I went outside and Hector was sitting behind the wheel of his truck.

I asked Hector what the heck had happened, and why he hadn’t shown up to finish the railing project.

Hector said he had been in a minor accident, and all of it would be resolved soon, then he waved a yellow piece of paper in front of me.

I couldn’t read the paper, but I saw it was a bail bond contract. It appears that Hector had just that day been bonded out of jail.

When Hector left, I asked his friends what really had happened.

They said that Hector had been in some kind of minor accident on the turnpike and he had attacked the other driver with a hammer.

After that day, we never ever saw Hector again, but we suspected they had put him in jail for a long time.

By now, more than a year had passed, and our railing was just half finished and we had no one to turn to complete the job.

We kept trying to call Hectors home, until the phone was eventually disconnected.

Not only did we not know where Hector was, but we had no idea where the rest of our $13,000.00 aluminum was.

That’s when I suggested that we try looking for Hector’s assistant Miguel was.

Our Miami shop manager took on the responsibility of calling all the Miami railing companies, and luckily after five or six calls he found the company where Hectors assistant Miguel was working.

Miguel promised he would come to our office with his new boss the very next day.

When they came, he introduced us to his new boss, a very tall and nasty acting Cuban, who was also named Miguel, to me, he looked dangerous.

This new Miguel guy seemed to know all about our project.

He said he knew where all our aluminum was, and he wanted to ransom it to us.

He also wanted triple the price to finish the railing job.

He made me so mad, I told them to leave our office.

The following day, Miguel, Hector’s original assistant, called me, he said the tall nasty Miguel wasn’t really the company owner.

He said the real owner of the railing company was a Nicaraguan fellow who was also in the trucking business, and they wanted a meeting with us again.

At the next meeting both Miguel’s agreed to finish our railing, and the price was to remain the same as Hector had quoted, so we all shook hands, and the project was on again.

About another two weeks passed and on a Saturday morning, their truck showed up.

Not only did the guys have a load of our railing, but they had brought down several young fellows as helpers.

That day the installation work went quickly.

Then, just like before, at about two in the afternoon the Heineken’s came out and everyone sat on our seawall fishing.

This ritual with the beer and the fishing went on for another two months.

We would always hear their truck leaving our property, usually around two in the morning.

As the weeks passed, my wife Katherine was becoming irritated with them, she wanted me to intercede and say something to them about all the beer drinking and the fishing, but I didn’t do it, I just wanted the railing job to be finished.

Then, one Saturday everything changed, both Miguel and Miguel showed up with their entire families.

It now appeared that every weekend, the work on our railing project was going to be like a big family picnic.

They came prepared with plenty of beer and food and they set up portable construction lights on the seawall, so now they had light to see at night while they were fishing.

Katherine was now complaining to me every week about their excessive drinking.

Finally, I agreed with her, I also had enough of it, and I called up their boss.

Their boss came down to the Keys with his wife, and when he saw what was going on, he stopped fooling around and they completed the job.

After more than two years of torture, the railing in the Keys was finally completed.

Just before they left, I asked the nasty Miguel to give us a price on putting up a circular aluminum stairway to the roof. I’m still waiting for him to reply.