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.

***

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!

Renovation - VII

The work continued apace just prior to Christmas. The builder tried to put pressure on everyone to have the extension in a finished state for us. Unfortunately the electricians were a bit of a let-down, but other than that everyone else made fair effort to do so.
Here is where we left you last time with items crossed out as completed:

the kitchen and dining area tiling
the living room area carpeting
the carport (concreting & roofing)
the pergola
the final electrical bits and pieces
the final plumbing bits and pieces
the final bits of painting and finishing
the clean-up
the fixing of anything that isn’t up to scratch (don’t get me started on this one)

And here are a few other things that I forgot to add at the time:

the tiling of the patio;
the moving of the air conditioning unit;
the removal of the temporary kitchen;
the creation of the fourth bedroom out of the ex-temporary kitchen;
the re-instatement of our front fence;
and whatever else I have forgotten.

And the builder has sent his progress claim stating 96% complete. The guy is a comedian in another life, I'm sure of it.

Anyway, here are a few pictures to give an indication of the progress made.
Kitchen missing doors on the laundry section and the appliances. But with dogs. :)


Kitchen with appliances and basically lived in. Only the glass splash back and range hood to come, and any fix-ups we think they should do.


Mr O installing cables for his music system under Miss O's direction. Carpet laid and protected from last minute painting.


Living area in its current incarnation. Decorating and fussing about with layout yet to be attempted.


So, that is pretty much it as it goes for the interior. The patio is currently under tiling construction and should be finished in a couple of days. Mr O has been hard at work setting up a small (but long and very heavy) retaining wall in the back garden, so I will photograph that in the next few days too. At the moment the garden is more weed and soil oriented, but we will eventually get to having green stuff that doesn't require pulling out by the end of summer, I am sure.

Until the next update, remember, don't renovate if you want to stay sane !

Renovation - VI

The work on the house continues. It is finally hitting the speed of a rolling snowball from the movies.
We now have the guts of a carport. Our kitchen is almost totally installed, as of today. We now have a proper hallway door, it is just waiting for the glazier to come back with safety glass for the two glass panels. We also have our new "back door" installed and I have a set of keys for it. The pergola is starting to look like a real structure too.

What's still to be done:

the kitchen and dining area tiling
the living room area carpeting
the carport (concreting & roofing)
the pergola
the final electrical bits and pieces
the final plumbing bits and pieces
the final bits of painting and finishing
the clean-up
the fixing of anything that isn't up to scratch (don't get me started on this one)

and probably a bunch of other stuff that I have forgotten about.

Here are photographs from the end of last week.


The skeleton carport.


The patio without pergola.


The partly installed kitchen.

Renovation - V

Our home is coming together in a slightly more rapid manner now, for which we are very grateful. Soon we will no longer be serenading Miss Oh Waily to sleep with digger noises and bandsaw songs.

Progress made today:

• The weather boards have been completed on all sides of the new extension.


• The electrician has pulled cables for the lighting of the extension.


• The side garden (down the driveway) has been removed totally.


• The back garden has been dug down to the level of the patio.
  
  
  
  • This leaves a raised bed along the back fence.
  
  
  
  

• Over the weekend the painters completed the roof colour.

And here are some photographs that I took a day or so ago.

***

This is part of the new extension. Mr O can be seen measuring out the distance for his birthday present's cables. (His lovely wife - me - purchased a home theatre system for his upcoming "big" birthday.) Men and tape measures, they seem made to go together. You can also see that our dogs are not the least bit interested in such excitement and that our roof had not yet been newly painted.



This next photograph is of the inside of the new extension, facing the area that will eventually be our kitchen. Benny kindly stood there for scale.



Then there is the view from approximately the kitchen sink to the sitting area, and on the far left, the new doorway to be.



And a view down the side of the house, the scruffy old garden to the left is now gone entirely. It's a shame about the roses, but they weren't being looked after and were pretty in spite of us rather than because of us. The nasty red-brown fence that has been falling to bits almost since we moved in will also be going during this mayhem of renovation. The fence man wasn't able to promise us a before-Christmas job, but after 10+ years of living with it, I told him that a few more weeks wasn't really a problem.



And finally, a view of the front of the house so you can see the new colour. No longer that green with a hint of grey, we have gone grey with no real hint of green. Much nicer I think. And if you are wondering about the bizarre coloured curtains in the windows to the right, please refer to my earlier entry and bleat about builders called We are home in which I detail one of the rather annoying things that have happened during this epic building project. (Not that it is large-scale, just that it seems to take on all the tragedy and comedy of an epic.)

We are home.

But you probably already guessed that from my previous post.

Yes, we are finally in our partly completed abode. We are living in what would have been the original house when the villa was new. Apparently those little lean-to things (like our previous kitchen) were a later addition. On top of that you would have had to make your way out the back to some sort of long-drop toilet presumably. As for baths and showers, my guess is a giant metal tub in front of the fire was brought out once a month whether you wanted it or not.

We now have five rooms in various states of functionality.
Our bedroom, which has the bay windows, is now almost fully functional with just two cupboard doors yet to be installed.
The second bedroom is 100% functional.
The temporary living room is 100% functional. (It is now trying to convince us it should stay as a reserve lounge cum library once the real one is completed.)
The bathroom is 100% functional.
The temporary kitchen really is temporary and will be going once the new addition at the back is completed. At that point the builders will come in and remove plumbing and old kitchen benches, and restore it into the semblance of a single bedroom.

Now when I say 100% functional, what I really mean is, it can be used and is being used and I am not expecting to see a builder within it's bounds for any form of work until I need a new brain transplant. What it doesn't mean is curtained or decorated in any fashion.
That's not entirely accurate, our bedroom is curtained for privacy and the ability of Miss O to sleep during the day. The curtains are, however, tacked up black out curtains temporarily nicked from work's training room. Not quite the quintessential mode in decorating, dahlings, but apparently really nice curtains made for our windows out of nice fabric and done by a professional organisation can take anywhere up to 5 weeks. There is no way I will be parading around my bedroom for 5 weeks with every Thomas, Richard and Henry able to gawk in at me as though I were a goldfish on display. So nasty old black out curtains it is. Needs must.

Do I need to mention that the curtains that were here before we moved out were perfectly serviceable (not flash), but between then and now they appear to have disappeared? Builder told us while we were in Tauranga that he would try to "salvage" the remaining curtains. Now why would we believe him? I ask you! And why would we think that they would be careful around the curtains, as none of the windows were actually going to be involved in the renovation process?! Hmm. Naive, definitely naive. Another lesson learned - and passed on.

Okay, I have managed to locate our SanDisk and upload some old photos to the Flickr Album. I have chosen a selection to give you an idea of how it is coming along. I do really promise you that we don't normally live in quite such a mess (well, most of the time anyway ;) ).


The backyard after demolition.


The backyard in progress.


The front bedroom on the day we left. Now the temporary living room.



Then we have the rooms seen in my earlier entry.


Our Bedroom (front bedroom with bay window)


The hallway minus Benny but with added rubbish and things without a home to go to.


The old living room, now the new computer room / junk storage facility.

Are you getting the impression that we have crammed all of our belongings into a much smaller space than they originally took up? Yes? You think so?

Keep chanting... "Only two months to go...only two months to go..."

P.S. Builder now says that the roof of the new addition may be up by the end of the week. (Don't chuckle - you're starting to sound as cynical as I am.)

NaBloPoMo is blown

It is self-explanatory really.
I didn't manage it. I tried, really I did, but I just couldn't fight the forces of darkness. i.e. the Builders

Since my last entry I have had four different abodes, only one of which gave me easy access to the internet. One didn't even bother to offer it, for goodness sakes!

Can I have a good moan again? Please? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Okay, since the last renovation update and bleat combination things have been happening. Not happy things I must warn you. Things to do with paint. Things to do with fumes and a three month old baby. Things to do with people who are barely one step above Neanderthal with regards to using that large thing balanced precariously on top of their shoulders.

If I said to you...

Let me know when it will be okay to move in. I won't tell you when we want to move in again. I want you to tell me when it will be in a fit state for us to move in, so call me and let me know, okay?

Would your reply have been...

I'll check with the painters and get back to you.

Then later that day call and say...

Next Monday will be fine.

Then, should your painter be a simpleton and incompetent with time and work attendance, you wouldn't bother to telephone me back and say...

Actually the painter has stuffed up and won't be finished until the weekend before the day I said would be okay to move in. That means you really ought to stay out until the following week.

Meaning, of course, that we drive up from Tauranga expecting to be able to move in on the Tuesday. (We're not stupid you know. If they say Monday, they mean they'll be doing "last minute things" on Monday.)

So we drive up on Sunday intending to stay overnight in abode choice number one until Tuesday (Mr O needs to be in Auckland for work on Monday). So far, so good. Mr O arranges for assistance to move our things in on Tuesday and two friends offer assistance which is gratefully accepted. On Sunday night we take a sneak peek at the place and notice the overwhelming smell of paint fumes. Enamel, you know. For the doors and trims. Standard Operating Practice. The builder is still onsite, which is reassuring. Apparently the painter took until the Sunday (and as it turned out, the Monday) to complete the paint job. The builder says he has spoken with the painter, who tells him that the house will be fine after a couple of days airing.

Okay we say. We'll see what things are like on Tuesday and then decide what to do. In the meantime we retire to our temporary abode and reflect on the house and information provided. Tuesday rolls around, and we decide that perhaps we should check with the paint manufacturer as the scent of enamel has not really faded away to nothing in two days of airing. Mrs O phones, is put through to customer services who put her through to the Help Desk who puts her through to the company chemist. Who then says that you really want to leave it seven days "just to be safe", although it might be okay sooner. Right. Seven days. That would be next weekend, then. Options are take it day-by-day, or just up sticks and head back to Tauranga. Desperation sets in. This is our third attempt to move back into the house. There is no way we will head back to Tauranga (even if it kills us), we will play it day-by-day. Each day is more excruciating than the last. We are unable to extend our stay at the first accomodation of choice - they have no rooms. We head to second abode of choice, but they only have room for a night. Move just up the road with the real hope of moving in the next day. Hopes are dashed by the scent of paint. Give up the day-by-day fight and opt to stay in abode number 4 for the next two days and move in on the weekend - seven days after the supposed final coat of paint. (Touch-ups not included.)

Well done you've made it this far. Welcome to our past week experience.

Renovation - IV

Today we were going to move back into the body of our house.

The key word in that sentence is "were".
Upon arriving home after the two and a half hour car journey with Mr O's step-father and my father, Mr O is not amused to find that the body of the house is not in a fit state to move furniture in, let alone us and a baby.
The painting was not completed, the wardrobes had not been fitted out, the bathroom wasn't finished, one of the light fittings hadn't been moved, some of the workmanship left a bit to be desired and the place was generally a dusty great mess.

This was not the state of affairs we were expecting, and it turns out to have been a good decision not to have gone up with the baby today, but to have enlisted family assistance with furniture moving instead. Otherwise I would have been a very, very cranky client. As it was I was less than impressed with the huge waste of everyone's time today.

The builder was supposed to have everything ready for us to move in last weekend, but that turned out to be impossible due to the hardening time for the re-polished floors. Today is 6 days after the last coat was applied, with day 7 being the final curing day. We spoke with the builder about moving in today when we saw him in Auckland last Thursday and he didn't say a word about things being unlikely to be finished.

We agreed to move out for a couple of weeks, maybe three to allow the builders full and unfettered access to the interior of the house. In return for this we expected the interior part of the work to be shortened by a week or slightly more. It has now been six weeks. I want to return to my own home. I do not wish to continue to be a house guest with my parents. I think they have been extremely generous and understanding, and insist that we haven't worn out our welcome. However, six weeks is over my limit of friendly stays, and it is well past time that we were out of their hair.

For anyone out there who works in customer service please take heed of the following advice:

Don't just say "Yes" to every request the customer makes. It really p*sses us off when what you say doesn't match what you do. Only say "Yes" if you know that it is a 100% guarantee that it will be a "Yes". And, if you discover that it isn't going to be a "Yes", then for the sake of everyone's time and efforts, make a simple telephone call and say the "Yes" has turned into a "No" because of [insert reason]. Otherwise your "Yes" should remain a "Yes", even if you have to break your own back to ensure it is. That is the essence of good customer service.

That, unfortunately, is my bleat for today.

Oh, and the builder is suggesting that all these little bits and pieces will be completed by the end of the weekend, so we will be 100% able to move in on Monday.

Hah. I'll believe that when I see it with my own two eyes.

Renovation - III

I have trawled through the photographs that I have so far and have come up with some images of work in progress.

This is our old bedroom looking through where the fireplace used to be. On the other side is the Old Living room, where the ornamental fireplace used to be. All gone. New walls are now in their place.



Here is a photograph of Bedroom One. It's taken from the doorway, but if you look at the first Renovation entry you will see that the fireplace against this wall (and the ratty old cupboard/closet with louvre door) is missing from this photograph.



These are progress photographs of the old study/single bedroom that is transforming itself into our new bathroom. Currently the neighbours have a nice view in the window, but that will soon be rectified with a carport and a new discrete glass window.




And our final photograph for this entry is the backyard. Those of you who are familiar with our home will recognise the absence of large wooden deck, planters, etc. Oh, and also the rather large L-shaped lean-to that once housed our kitchen and dining room, as well as our bathroom and laundry.


Yes. We did embark on rather extensive renovations right around the time the baby was due. In fairness we thought the council would be somewhat quicker in allowing the building permit, but then we can be very naive and optimistic about some things. Lesson learned.

Renovations - II

Unfortunately I don't have any photos to update you with today. When we arrived to take a brief look through the house this morning the floor sanders had just finished the last coat of polish, so there was no way to go into the house for snaps. I will take a look and see if we have any from Mr O's visits over the past couple of weeks that give you some idea of the changes.

At lunchtime today however, we met the builder and kitchen manufacturer to nail down the design and colours and materials, etc. We are being exceedingly boring and staying with the neutral theme as much as possible. We are having colours called espresso and oyster for the cabinets. And get this... we are having a feature wall in our kitchen! I didn't know there was such a thing, but a couple of Trends magazine issues later and we figured this would be a good way to break up the design a bit so it won't be too bland and boring.
But the thing that will be Mr O's pride and joy (and bane of his life I suspect) is the funky 2.5 metre wide, 750mm high, bright red glass splashback that will be going across the wall behind our stove. No doubt it will make for cleaning nightmares, but he was keen on it and it is primarily his domain so I wasn't about to argue too hard.

I can also tell you that we are planning to move into the body of the house next Wednesday, all being well. And that should mean a return to broadband access, and easier blogging for me too. In the meantime, see you all tomorrow.

Renovations - I

Finally I have a couple of before photographs to show you.

These rather bad photos were taken on the morning we moved out, so the rooms are partially bare, partially furnished with the last couple of items.



This is the fireplace and dodgy closet in the front bedroom with the bay windows. Both of which are no longer there now.



This is the old hallway with Benny in the foreground and all our junk waiting to travel with us in the living room. Looking through the door into the old kitchen and out into the back yard. The hallway doorway is no longer there and neither is the old kitchen and bad lino. In its place is a large, long, full height hallway; a newly enclosed room and the old kitchen is currently now a concrete pad and some framing.



This is the old living room looking from the kitchen door across the fireplace. The fireplace no longer exists, the french doors are gone and this area is enclosed with a new wall.

We are planning a short visit to home tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to show you these rooms from about the same vantage point in tomorrow's blog entry.