obsessive about paperwork.

He keeps folders for everything: receipts, change orders, signatures, and dates.

My grandmother used to joke that he had better records for cabinet hinges than most people had for their taxes.

By the final week, the room looked incredible.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves framed the fireplace.

The cabinets fit so perfectly against the walls that they looked built into the house from the beginning.

The window bench stretched almost the entire back wall, with drawers underneath and a custom cushion the homeowners had chosen themselves.

I stopped by one afternoon while Grandpa finished the last trim.

Even I could see how beautiful it was.

The wife, Melissa, walked through the room taking pictures.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” she said.

Her husband, Grant, gave the finished room an approving look.

“Looks great.”

Grandpa smiled.

That should have ended it.

It didn’t.

The next afternoon, Grandpa called me.

“You’re not going to believe what these people just tried.”

I was at work.

“What happened?”

“They don’t want to pay me.”

I assumed they were disputing one of the change orders.

“How much?”

“Six thousand two hundred.”

I nearly dropped my phone.

“What?”

The homeowners had walked through the finished room again.

Complimented everything.

Taken more pictures.

Then Grant pulled Grandpa aside.

He told him they’d “gone over their renovation budget” and wouldn’t be paying the remaining $6,200.

Grandpa thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

“Did you show him the contract?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“And?”

I waited.

“He shrugged.”

Grandpa sounded completely calm.