Day 115 - January 2nd, 2015
I have this natty little spreadsheet on my computer's desktop that allows me to know the number of days that we have been working on this project when you enter today's date. Chris the builder promised us that we would be finished by Christmas (I'm sure he meant 2014???) so my app only calculated days up until 31 December 2014.
Hmm...dumb ass! I've just increased the app's range to go until the end of March 2015 - fingers crossed we won't be still working on this project then!
Anyway, since my last update referred to work that happened eons ago, I'm just going to dump loads of photos in this major post so you can see where we're up to.
It would be remiss of me not to tell you what the hold up has been in the project. It's really come down to one trade - the cement renderer! When Chris rang his renderer whom he had lined up to do the job, he was aghast to find out that his main man had fallen off some scaffolding and broken both his ankles and couldn't walk (obviously). He wasn't prepared to send his team around to do the job unsupervised, as none of them spoke any English.
So...there was a mad rush to find a renderer who could do the job. Enter a new player who had done a job for a friend of ours. I'm not going to use his real name - let's just call him Dick. "Sure I can do the job" says Dick in Turkish English. "It will take me and my team 5 days to do the render and another 3 days to put on the acrylic colour coat, clean up and get off site".
Ten days later, the scaffolding goes up all round the house and Dick starts work. There is no 'team' - just Dick and a labourer on some occasions. Another renderer did turn up for 2 half days but mostly it's just Dick. Dick rarely turns up 2 days running and when he does show up he nicks off after a couple of hours to go to another job he's working on (we know he was working on at least another 2 jobs but his labourer reckons it's 8!) to try to appease another irate builder and owner.
Well...Dick started the job on the 3rd of November and he still hasn't finished. The scaffolding is still up all around the outside of the house and there's still tons of render work to do. This has held up the roofers, the gyprocker, the plumber and most of all Chris the builder, who can't get on with what he needs to be doing.
Added to this, when Dick rendered the inside brick walls of the entry foyer (needless to say he made a huge, huge mess inside), he got his labourer to clean off the floor tiles after he had finished. I was upstairs when I heard Chris going off downstairs at someone and as I got downstairs, I saw that the labourer was hosing off the tiles with the high pressure water hose and all the water was running under the door of the flat and across the timber flooring.
The floor flooded and although we applied the hot air blowers for a week, the floor buckled and split and when the timber floor company inspected it, it was declared a write-off. A $6000 floor that needed to be replaced!
Another labourer of Dicks was instructed by Dick to clean the render that had been carelessly splattered onto our new picture window. The worker then proceeded to get a blade and inscribe a dozen or so vertical scratches right down a $3000 piece of glass. The window company told Chris that it is virtually impossible to fix the pane and fitting a new window will require undoing and re-doing a lot of the work already completed. DUMB!
Anyway, enough of Dick - he's in my nightmares now and we all want him to finish up (no other renderer will come in to finish another tradesman's work) and to get out of our lives.
To the photos.........
The kitchen components stacked up in the flat - these also got water damaged when the flat was flooded.
The renderer's team - this fellow showed up for 2 half days during the job.
This was 10 days into the 5 day render schedule!
The back of the house with the first cement render coat. Note the plastic on the windows - this is to keep the render off the glass and the frame. Somehow Dick managed to get render on every glass pane and every frame.
The front of the house during the rendering.
Chris putting blue-board on the front of the lower deck to allow for the Rockcote (a synthetic render - not the old mortar kind) to be applied.
Upstairs with the new stacker door doors just installed.
Macalister about to remove one of the walls in the kitchen. Before....
....and after !
Chris contemplating his hat, the hole through to the laundry...and what to do about Dick!
What's left of the old kitchen.
Where did all our furniture go as we gut the inside of the house - why into our bedroom of course! Cozy!!!
Two photos of our ruined timber floor in the flat downstairs.
Hmm...dumb ass! I've just increased the app's range to go until the end of March 2015 - fingers crossed we won't be still working on this project then!
Anyway, since my last update referred to work that happened eons ago, I'm just going to dump loads of photos in this major post so you can see where we're up to.
It would be remiss of me not to tell you what the hold up has been in the project. It's really come down to one trade - the cement renderer! When Chris rang his renderer whom he had lined up to do the job, he was aghast to find out that his main man had fallen off some scaffolding and broken both his ankles and couldn't walk (obviously). He wasn't prepared to send his team around to do the job unsupervised, as none of them spoke any English.
So...there was a mad rush to find a renderer who could do the job. Enter a new player who had done a job for a friend of ours. I'm not going to use his real name - let's just call him Dick. "Sure I can do the job" says Dick in Turkish English. "It will take me and my team 5 days to do the render and another 3 days to put on the acrylic colour coat, clean up and get off site".
Ten days later, the scaffolding goes up all round the house and Dick starts work. There is no 'team' - just Dick and a labourer on some occasions. Another renderer did turn up for 2 half days but mostly it's just Dick. Dick rarely turns up 2 days running and when he does show up he nicks off after a couple of hours to go to another job he's working on (we know he was working on at least another 2 jobs but his labourer reckons it's 8!) to try to appease another irate builder and owner.
Well...Dick started the job on the 3rd of November and he still hasn't finished. The scaffolding is still up all around the outside of the house and there's still tons of render work to do. This has held up the roofers, the gyprocker, the plumber and most of all Chris the builder, who can't get on with what he needs to be doing.
Added to this, when Dick rendered the inside brick walls of the entry foyer (needless to say he made a huge, huge mess inside), he got his labourer to clean off the floor tiles after he had finished. I was upstairs when I heard Chris going off downstairs at someone and as I got downstairs, I saw that the labourer was hosing off the tiles with the high pressure water hose and all the water was running under the door of the flat and across the timber flooring.
The floor flooded and although we applied the hot air blowers for a week, the floor buckled and split and when the timber floor company inspected it, it was declared a write-off. A $6000 floor that needed to be replaced!
Another labourer of Dicks was instructed by Dick to clean the render that had been carelessly splattered onto our new picture window. The worker then proceeded to get a blade and inscribe a dozen or so vertical scratches right down a $3000 piece of glass. The window company told Chris that it is virtually impossible to fix the pane and fitting a new window will require undoing and re-doing a lot of the work already completed. DUMB!
Anyway, enough of Dick - he's in my nightmares now and we all want him to finish up (no other renderer will come in to finish another tradesman's work) and to get out of our lives.
To the photos.........
The renderer's team - this fellow showed up for 2 half days during the job.
This was 10 days into the 5 day render schedule!
The front of the house during the rendering.
Chris putting blue-board on the front of the lower deck to allow for the Rockcote (a synthetic render - not the old mortar kind) to be applied.
Macalister about to remove one of the walls in the kitchen. Before....
....and after !
Chris contemplating his hat, the hole through to the laundry...and what to do about Dick!
What's left of the old kitchen.
Where did all our furniture go as we gut the inside of the house - why into our bedroom of course! Cozy!!!
Two photos of our ruined timber floor in the flat downstairs.
Putting up some of the ceiling sheets - it's a 4 man operation as the sheets are 6 metres long.
I've been building our new kitchen down stairs in the garage. It's been a bit of a problem as hopping around with my left leg in a moon boot is not conducive to good carpentry skills. Here is the first of the new kitchen in situ upstairs.
The photos below show the new Caesarstone benchtops being lifted by crane onto the front verandah for the new kitchen.
Two shots of the new kitchen as the benchtops are being installed. It's December 23rd and we've just made it before Christmas!
