A Builder's Life

I have been struggling with my conscience and my apathy over this blog entry.
On the one hand, I know that I will feel hopeless if I don't commit something to *paper*.  On the other hand I am not sure whether writing this will do anyone any good, except perhaps by way of letting me blow off steam.  My issue is: am I right to bleat about this for my own satisfaction?

So here it is, judge for yourselves...

If you have been here for a little while you will be aware that the Oh Waily family has had substantial renovations carried out on their house.  You can read all about this if you do a search (see the sidebar) for my posts on Renovations.

Well, the saga continues.  As of writing we don't have our code compliance certificate from the council and since May have been having what amounts to a stressful and angry-making experience with our builder.
So angry, you might notice, that I have finally sat down to write about it.
Perhaps we should have seen it all coming.  Then again, I have never professed to being clairvoyant.
My first bleat was back in November, and that should have begun the alarm bells.  That bleat involved a lack of customer service skills on the part of our builder, a theme which he has managed to master in spades.
Following on from the previous aborted attempts to move back in to the house we had this bleat about customer service to move on to.  Then of course there was the curtain debacle.

I know you are all sitting reading this and thinking to yourselves - how did they ever make it to this advanced age while being patently naive?!

So, what could we possibly move on to that I haven't shared before now?

Well, the principal work on the building finished just before Christmas.  Naturally there were things that slid through and trailed along.  But, I'd say that most things were complete by mid-January.  Then it goes quiet.
Not a peep from the builder. Nothing.  No request for final payment - nada.
While we sit and think this is unusual for a businessman, we also don't have a particularly high estimate of this person's business skills.  We figure that he's probably getting the code compliance stuff sorted and will be in touch in due course with a final bill of around $20,000 - $25,000.

Now we hit the nitty and the gritty.  Mid-to-late May and we get a massive envelope in the post.  It contains the remaining invoices from the builder.  Somehow he has managed to expand, what according to his last open-listed items was work totalling what we expected, to a set of invoices in the $50,000 range.

Even now I still feel sick thinking about it.  I feel sick and disgusted.  I feel taken advantage of, treated abominably and generally really p*ssed off with what is clearly an individual who feels that he has every right to take charge of my bank account for his own benefit.
It is also funny to note that this set of invoices is the only one that came with a legal note that in my opinion amounted to attempted intimidation (pay up or else).  Do you think that someone else knew that they were in a morally corrupt position of attempting to extract money that they neither informed us about, nor in any way signalled the possibility of.  Sadly these costs should have been indicated to us prior to the building process starting, as they were a council requirement, but not one word passed the builder's mouth to us on the subject of cost blow-outs.  Oh, and he also didn't bother to mention that the changes also involved registering an encumbrance on our title - with the attendant ongoing costs that this means to us.

We took legal advice, as you would in these sorts of instances.  In the end we decided that despite feeling we had a better than 50/50 chance of convincing an arbitrator of our view on this matter, that it was our sanity and stress levels that were more important than prolonging the unnecessary stress.  We came to an agreement on what we would and would not pay with the builder.

I cannot stress how unpleasant this last experience has been.  In my heart I feel that perhaps we should have pushed on and taken the legal road.  But then this is countered by my experience of watching others go through mediation, arbitration and finally a court case with a builder.  It is fair to say that the law does not necessarily take the common sense view of situations and while you may feel that your case is strong, the law does not always come down on your side.  It is almost a case of gambling on a roulette wheel - will they view the situation in my favour, or not?  Or in the case of builders, avoiding responsibility for actions that are clearly theirs and theirs alone.

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Ms Oh Waily's lessons:

1. Don't employ builders if you can possibly avoid it. (Lots of people have agreed with me on this.)


2. Make sure that you remove the option for provisional sums (it is an industry standard to have them, I believe) and or have a specific stated maximum increase that you will pay before re-quoting is needed.


3. Make sure that any changes you agree to are done in writing, with a request for quoting prior to work being carried out. (If your builder is twitchy about the time this adds to his job - drop him, he will be organisationally cr*p, just like ours was.)


4. Make sure that you have the time and inclination, if your building project is as big as ours was, to be your own project manager.  Let the builder do his thing - but you need to be watching his back like a hawk - and you need to be on his case each and every day.


5. Keep a diary of the work.  Take notes of all meetings and their outcomes or actions to be taken.  Copy them and send them to the builder. (I know, I didn't think I needed to do his job for him.  Turns out I was wrong.)

I think that covers most of it.

If you live in NZ, and are considering building anything of any size, I am happy to give a personal review and recommendation regarding builders - especially those who belong to a franchise where the franchise owner is happy to take the word of their franchisee rather than visit and investigate the complaints of their ultimate customer.  Hmm.  I don't like being vindictive - but in this instance, I can truly and honestly say that I hope our builder does not survive the economic downturn.  The pain and aggravation he has caused our family is a disgrace, simply because he could not organise and communicate the important financial information that every client (in my work experience) expects from their service supplier.  Others who do not share our fortunate situation and flexibility with regards to work and financing could be left bankrupt by this sort of behaviour.

Here ends the Bleat!

The Month of September in Books

This month was an even split between fiction and non-fiction.  In total I managed six books.  Here they are:

Fiction:

The Siege of Krishnapur

This is the first Booker book that I have read in my Booklitzer Challenge 200.  It is the 1973 prize winner, set in India during the 1857 mutiny.  It is a bit slow to start with, but on the whole I feel that I can reasonably recommend this if you are looking to expand your reading.  I would probably go so far as to say that I may try to find another J.G.Farrell book to read once my Booklitzer 200 is finished.  For my full review you can browse back here at my post The Siege of Krishnapur.

The World According to Bertie

This is the fourth book in the 44 Scotland Street series. It once again follows the stories of Bertie Pollock, Angus Lordie, Domenica MacDonald, Pat and Matthew.
As usual I am horrified at the personality of Bertie's mother, Irene, but the wit with which she and her family are drawn is irresistible. Without giving anything away, it is also nice to see two separate storylines come together at the end of the book.  I am wondering if a previously minor character is going to be bumped up a notch.  I must take the time to get the next installment - The Unbearable Lightness of Scones.

And What Do You Do?

I chose this book because it sounded interesting, for chick lit.  A woman gives up her high-powered life as an executive in London to have a baby and move to Paris with her much younger French husband. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't a view of infidelity and supposed French marital mores.  While the writing was light, the characters didn't grab me and frankly neither did the tit-for-tat affairs.  But then again perhaps I have an old-fashioned view of marriage.  You know, that there should only be the two of you and that being faithful is important.  Obviously I was never French in another life, nor Bohemian, nor Hippy.  Oh well. Can't say that I would look for another by this author.

Non-Fiction:

Trump: Never Give Up

Following up from last month's Carolyn 101, I spotted this at the library and decided to take The Don for a test drive.
The book was extremely easy to read, full of anecdotes and ego.  Considering the fortune that the man has made, he is probably entitled to gloat over his achievements.
Love him or hate him, he certainly takes his business seriously and if we are to believe many of the comments repeated throughout the book, he is also big on improving things. Certainly not a business classic, it does still give common sense advice as well as an insight into a larger than life personality.

Your Mortgage And How To Pay It Off In Five Years

Yet another in the Anita Bell series of financial advisory books.  I whipped through this one at light speed because we already have a mortgage, while the first half of the book is dedicated to saving for one, estimating what you might reasonably want to pay in order to do as the title says, and structuring that said loan with an institution of your choice.
My interest was in any advice for those of us already up to our ears in home ownership. Briefly, it goes like this...
Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice and budget like a demon.  (And I thought I was bad about paperwork!)  Still, I can heartily recommend this to anyone not yet encumbered by a loan, especially if you don't want to flounder about for the normal 25-30 years of repayments.

Why Mars And Venus Collide

This is another in the Mars and Venus series by John Gray.  I thought it was time to see if Dr Gray had anything new to say, and apparently he does.  Unlike the original (which I am dredging my memory about), this effort introduces testosterone and oxytocin to the explanation for the differences in gender response to stress and therefore interaction.  He also has two new techniques to deal with these responses and the communication problems they can generate.  If like me and you have wondered if he was sitting outside your house pressing a glass up to the wall while reading the original Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, then you may enjoy this updated version.  Get it from the library first though.

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That's it for September.  I will see you back here at the end of the month for a review, hopefully, of some Pulitzer prize winners and the odd BBC Top 200 entry.

Happy reading.