Backstory: Last year after we hit an all-time local high of 106 degrees in Mukilteo, my wife finally agreed that getting a heat pump was a good idea. We talked to a bunch of people in November, and due to some weather shenanigans (seriously, every time the sales guy was supposed to come out so we could sign the paperwork, there was either flooding or an insane amount of snow) we didn't get the paperwork signed until Jan 6th. None of the companies would do online signing; they all wanted to do in person. The whole process was really weird - all the bidders wanted to come inside our house to fill out the bid right then, despite it being the height of (Delta? Omicron? Can't remember which it was) and only wearing cloth masks loosely. They acted offended when we didn't let them in.

The sales guy at the time said they were having supply chain issues, but he didn't think there would be any problems getting the unit we ordered by April, May at the latest. Oh, and there was a $5000 deposit involved.

February, during our insurance renewal, our insurance company told us we needed to redo the roof or else they wouldn't cover our house. We started that bidding process. Joy.

March, I emailed our heat pump sales guy to see how things were going. He made a comment about how it was taking a long time to source them, and hey, he didn't know when it would happen, but somebody who had put in an order in December had gotten theirs installed, so he had good hopes for us.

After some weather-related delays on the roofing stuff, it started middle of last week. They were very quick in their work, and got the major stuff done right away, but in the process they didn't do some things we asked them to, and did something we specifically asked them not to - namely, drove a bunch of nails through the roofing material that punched through the eaves of the house, leaving a lot of unsightly poky nails sticking out. (Also, they were crap at cleaning up after themselves, so we were worried about the sprog getting a nail through her foot.)

I also reached out to the HVAC people, and got a response from the sales drone that was basically "Hey, I have no idea when your unit will be in, everybody has changed their order to something else, could be next year. Oh, but we have this other unit that's $750 more, less efficient, and noisier that we're actually getting, and we could possibly install it in July, August at the latest."

Queue Mrs. InThane loosing her shit. (Not that I blame her)

We "fired" our HVAC sales guy and asked for another one who actually could communicate with us. If we started over with another company, we're looking at 6+ months just to get a bid (if they even respond - when we were originally getting bids, I called eight places and got three responses) and fuck knows how long to get the install actually done.

Meanwhile, we're beginning to realize the "brothers" in the title of the roofing company means the old guy who gave us the quote and his brother, not their kids who have been coming out and doing the actual work. Seems like the older generation who had been running the business are in the process of handing the business off to their kids, and the kids while earnest about getting things to the place we want them (I'll give them credit, they've come out here four separate times to fix issues we've found and have been very congenial about it) aren't really up to snuff in the actual "getting it right the first time" that the online reviews for the company talked about. The roof itself is OK; it's the knock-on stuff that's been the problem.

...aaaaand to top it all off, this morning the sprog woke up with a fever and tested positive for COVID. I'm negative so far and wearing an N95, but...