I’ll take an F from the top row and a U from the bottom row, thanks.

Comments Off on I’ll take an F from the top row and a U from the bottom row, thanks.

So, tomorrow I’m off to prep the house for the arrival of the asbestos guys. Mainly this is ‘repairing’ the floor where the car decking has rotted through and then broken. In this case, I’m just going to screw a chunk of 2×4 along the run next to the wall, put some screws through into the more solid bits and then some into the rotten one. I’m hoping that this has the effect of pulling the broken / rotten bit of car decking back up and in line with the rest of the floor. Also, that it holds it well enough while they strip the asbestos from the ceiling.

So at least we have have some progress.

We also have some progress in that we have a permit for plumbing. I’m only allowed to use it to try and stop the leaks that have been keeping the house damp and rotting (although it says things about installing new stuff, the deal with the permit folks was that they’d issue it while they were waiting for the submission of the remodel permit, but only if I was willing to hold off doing the rest of the work until the remodel permit is in).

I’ve found one of the damp-sources. The pipework that fed the shower/bath and the waste plumbing from the bath is a disgrace. The soldering on the fresh water side is terrible, and has clearly leaked since it was installed. The waste water side is loose and held in place with expanding foam filler.

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This explains the copious rot in this area.

I suspect a similar situation exists behind the water heater.

The kitchen sink I think has been leaking from the waste water side – this is because one of the waste water pipes had an ornamental nut on it. The actual join was just two pieces of plastic pipe telescoped one inside the other. There was no seal, no fittings, nothing actually preventing a leak. But the installer had taken the time to put a threaded metal ring that screwed onto where there should be some kind of seal. So that was nice. I’m still going to whip off the rotten and mouldy plasterboard – we need our temporary sink in there, and I don’t want that manky crap staying there through the build. So I’ll put my temporary sink supports directly on the exterior wall timbers.

Anyhow, so there has been some progress. Also, a media blasting company has come out and thinks they can strip the paint from our T1-11 siding which means we have some hope of being able to work out what the existing nail pattern* is – and not having to just renail the entire building, which would have made me ‘sad’.

And then we come to our disaster area.

So, let’s run through our contractor luck:

1) We just didn’t get on well. He quoted, I’m sure he’s fine, but we spent the whole time being mansplained to, and with him talking over us.
2) Quoted then disappeared for weeks with no response. Then suddenly popped up and said “oh hey, I just noticed your message”. Didn’t answer the question that was in the message, has never actually produced a quote for the rest of the work we asked him to quote for.
3) Produced a quote that was nearly the work asked for. Needed some minor additions before we gave them the deposit and so we e-mailed our questions (Wednesday), Thursday we all met up to go through the questions. Friday they said ‘we need to know the color for the roof’, we asked what supplier (Friday), Monday rolls around and we have an e-mail saying “We got deposits on some big jobs and won’t be able to start yours for at least 2 months”. Uh hu. So that doesn’t really work for us.
4) Quote did not match much of what we discussed (in terms of was missing big bits of job). We had them as our second choice, but on messaging them today they also have taken on a big job and wouldn’t be able to start until January. Also they seem unaware that engineered parallel chord trusses are a thing, and seems to think he’d have to build them on-site thus adding time and engineering costs. Gah.

For lucky number 5, who we’re meeting tomorrow, I’ve actually written a scope of work so we might actually get the quote right the first time (ha), so we could sign a contract, and thus be able to pay a deposit before they wander off and take more work from someone else.

Perhaps it’s not a thing here** for builder’s contracts*** to be faintly accurate. But I like to sign something that actually says what I want them to do and an agreement on payment and what happens if costs over-run.

But apparently writing down what you’re asking is hard. Or something. I dunno. I’m thoroughly bored of discussions where a contractor holds a pen and paper, writes nothing, is given some diagrams, and then fucks off home and produces a quote that includes a random 70% of what we discussed.

It never seemed to be quite so hard to find a contractor in the UK. Yeah, we had plenty of shitty, shonky contractors who did poor quality work, or tried to rip us off, and we learned a lot about what we needed to say or do to make sure work was an acceptable standard. But just to get someone to even start the damn job is proving to be incredibly frustrating.

So fingers crossed for tomorrow.

I’ve also left a message for our recommended electrician to ask about installing a new weatherhead / meterbox / panel. I’m hoping that he rings back. I realised that needs to be moved before the roof gets done, because the weatherhead runs up through the roof. That places some urgency on the job… Not least because I’ve now put in the request to PSE to move the power from the NW to SW corner of the building.

I’m also hoping that our arborist will get back to us before the power company turn up and ruin the one decent thing about the house, the tree at the front. But given how things are going at the moment, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.

* my sneaking suspicion is that the word “pattern” may be misplaced here.
** Olympia? Washington? USA?
*** To be fair, there’s been a lot more push here for us to “just sign” things that were wrong. Sometimes materially inaccurate. Which does not go down terribly well.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.