Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware!

I'd like to think that people who knew me would say that I am relatively smart.  But they might also say I am trusting and try to avoid confrontation.  Despite the former, a combination of the last two seems to have gotten me into a world of trouble and I am not sure what to do.

You may remember that we are having the garden done. Yes, that is present tense, it still isn't complete despite it being over twelve weeks since I first handed over some of our hard earned cash.

I found our landscaper in the local paper.  His advert said that they are the locals who are on time and get the job done.  He seemed very nice, was flexible with our ever evolving plans, and his work was pretty good. 

My instinct is to get everything in writing - you should see my 'house book'.  Every conversation with every tradie who ever walked through these doors, or picked up the phone has been written down, with names, dates and details.  My second instinct is also to protect myself by withholding some of the payment where possible until I am satisfied.

My instincts have failed me this time.  No contract, nothing in writing, thousands of dollars paid out.

Up to a point all was going well.  Then, about 6 weeks ago after the bulk of the work had been complete, the garden guy disappeared onto a new job.  True, only a small part of the job remained - completing the reticulation in the back yard, and fixing up a couple of bricks - but the job remains unfinished (and all but $200 has been paid).

A fortnight ago, I saw the garden guy briefly when he came to investigate a large hole that had formed by the new soakwell.  I asked when he would be finishing the retic and he explained he was in the middle of another big job, and the owner was threatening to fire him if he left site once again.  He told me he would be back in a week.

I did wonder at the time why he was so scared by this other fellow but didn't seemed to care that I too, (despite being young, female and relatively friendly) was also a client with an unfinished job, but I guess I just answered that.

Last week came and went with no sight of the garden guy.  I sent a few text messages asking when I could expect him, and received nothing in reply.

I began getting quite shitty.

Today I picked up the phone.  If you know me, you will know this is a major thing. I hate using the phone and I hate confrontations, yet when he picked up I asked him what was going on, and when I could expect to see him to finish the job.  He denied having told me he would be back last week to finish the job, he actually told me he hadn't told any of his clients anything in the previous ten days. (So there are more us!).  He told me not to push him or else I should find someone else to finish the job.  I needed to be more patient, he said.  I told him that I had been very patient and it had already been 12 weeks.

'That's it,' he said.  Then he hung up on me.

So I picked up the phone again. This time I called the Department of Consumer Protection.

It turns out that landscaping comes under the Home Building Contracts Act 1991, and for all work between $7,500 and $500,000 (which this does) the builder (or garden guy) needs to provide a whole swag of goodies including a written contract, a notice to the homeowner and cannot ask for a deposit greater than 6.5% of the total cost.  We paid a 30% deposit.  Cash.

Turns out this fellow has broken a whole raft of laws and should I proceed with a formal complaint, he could be the one in a whole world of trouble, with fines in excess of $50,000.

I don't want to the be the person who takes away someone's livelihood.  But I do want my job finished and I don't want any hassles. I also want to make sure that someone else doesn't fall victim to the same thing.  The thing is, he's certainly not at the same level as those dodgy guys you see on Today Tonight who have taken pensioners for thousands of dollars, or who do bad work that falls apart. If he had come last week to finish the job I would probably be singing a very different tune.

But his last words to me were that I 'blew it'.  So it sounds like he doesn't intend to return.  And would I really want him back here after being treated like that?

So what do I do?  Cut my losses and find someone else?  Call again and threaten him with a formal complaint?  Play nice and wait patiently for him to find a few hours to finish the job?  I'd greatly appreciate your advice.

Ensuite Ambivalence

For the first time in my life I now have an ensuite.

It's pretty fabulous when it comes to showering late at night, because it means I am no longer in danger of waking two sleeping children with clanking pipes and dodgy singing.

It's great when it comes to brushing my teeth in the morning because I can wander around the bedroom and fidget with my books and necklaces, or bounce up and down on the bed (something I tell my four year old you should never do when you have a toothbrush in your mouth).

But I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to the middle-of-the-night-pee, having an ensuite totally sucks.

Yes, the proximity is great.  Yes, it's brilliant not having to run the gauntlet of creaky floorboards and run the risk of waking the entire household.

But at 3am the house is very quiet. 

And three metres is not a very big distance.

And when you combine quiet house and short distance, you may as well be peeing on your husband's side table for all the good a hollow toilet door is.

So what do I do at 3am, when it is freezing and the Blonde Bombshell's ex-birthday balloons are popping downstairs and freaking me out completely?  I walk to the downstairs bathroom and pee there.

Curse my early morning modesty.

Renovation Virgins - How Not to Be Taken For a Ride

Hindsight, what a marvellous invention.

I can't turn back the clock on my own renovations, but if anyone out there is mad enough to be contemplating one of their own, I hereby offer some of the lessons I have learned over the past two years.

1. Know the basic guidelines set by your local council.  You would think that if you engage a professional builder to draw up some plans they will know what is allowed by your local council. Do not assume anything!  In our case, six months were wasted after the designer submitted a very beautiful set of plans to council which had the upstairs addition at the front of the house.  Our local council are very clear that second storeys must be located at the back of the block. It was only after the plans were rejected that I went online to read the building guidelines, and it was very clear, even to me. If I had been even vaguely familiar with the guidelines before we started, I doubt we would have allowed the first set of plans to even be printed, let alone submitted to council.

2a. Keep a record of everything.  It may seems a little anal and OCD, but I had a 55c school notebook that I took everywhere.  I recorded every conversation we had with builders, designers, banks, tradies and the council. I took down names, dates and phone numbers.  I wrote down the names of taps and tiles and toilets, serial numbers, prices - I even drew pictures!  Taking photos would have been even more helpful.  That little book saved my skin a dozen times over, as I could recall details in an instant, knew who to call if there was a problem, and could solves disputes by simply looking things up in my House Bible.

2b. Get everything in writing.  The flipside to the House Bible is the written quote.  Don't let the warm fuzzy security of the House Bible make you think you don't need suppliers to provide formal quotes.  Print emails and file them somewhere you can actually find them.  If you have a phone conversation with someone, follow it up with an email and get them to acknowledge the decision/price etc in writing.

3. Check things as they are delivered, not after they are installed.  I was at home throughout the entire process as we have two small children (living through renovations with small children is a blog in its own right) but it meant that I was almost always home when things were getting delivered and installed.  If I saw a plumber walking in with a toilet I would stop him, say hello, and promptly check the details and match them with my House Bible to make sure we were getting the right thing.  Most of the guys didn't mind - after all, they were the ones who would have to remove it again if it was wrong.  I picked up on the wrong bathroom tiles before they were installed and the wrong glass splashback.  I was able to stop the carpet layers installing carpet on my jarrah stairs.  I wasn't home the day they installed the wrong glass in the bathroom windows, but we can't win everything!

4. Don't be afraid to ask questions and make complaints.  This was the hardest lesson for me to learn, as we are all raised to be polite and not make a fuss.  Make a fuss!  If you are not happy, say something!  Yes it's awkward and you feel like a right heel, but not only are you paying for it, but you have to live there after all the tradies pack up and move on.  If it's not right, get them to fix it.  If it was your kids who spilt paint all over the bricks you'd yell at them and make them clean it up, so why would you accept any less from professionals who are being paid to give you something new and beautiful?

5. Keep telling yourself it will all be over soon.  Building is like pregnancy... there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it will all be worth it.  Keep things in perspective, keep a sense of humour and keep a bottle of wine in the fridge.

The End is Nigh!

Can you hear that? That is the sound of a vacuum being run over the floorboards in my new upstairs extension.

That is the sound of being so close to the finishing line you can practically reach out and touch the ribbon, or at least the dude standing next to it with the stop watch and bored expression on his face.

I have not been writing about my ongoing saga with the renovations because it has been making me so angry I have developed a new personality.  Funnily enough, this new person is someone I have always wanted to be.

I argue, plead, cajole, negotiate, articulate and am pushy on a scale that would scare the pageant mums with their coiffed and made up toddlers.  I have surprised myself on a number of occasions, and regularly congratulate myself on my 'House Book' which contains every single conversation I have had with builders and tradies over the past two years, every colour decision we made, every fitting we ever chose.  I have dates, names and figures in excruciating detail and it has saved my proverbial more times than I care to count.

I love my anal tendencies. I would thoroughly recommend them to anyone considering the renovation route.

I digress.

This week the plastering was repatched (again), and the walls repainted (again).  The sink was fixed. The splashback installed. The new TV aerial installed. The blinds were installed.  On Friday - only three sleeps to go - the carpet will be installed.

Carpet - no more echoing floorboards and bits of plaster stuck between your toes.  No more builders dust and the need to wear thongs every time you go upstairs. After the carpet goes down, we can move in!  After the carpet goes down, there will be no more strange men in my house. A friend said the other day that doing renovations and having lots of strange men in the house must be like having unwanted house guests. Hit the nail on the head!

I have decided I love my carpet installer and he will be my new hero. If I ever have a boy-child I will name him after the carpet installer, because he represents to me the end of this very dirty, very expensive, very frustrating journey. The end is nigh, I can almost smell it.  And it smells good!. 

The Tortured Writer Starts her Craft

Despite my harried rantings last year about my writing life being over before it started due to mix ups with daycare days, all has been sorted, and I humbly beg your forgiveness. 

And so I find myself today without my beautiful children, as the Blonde Bombshell and Miss Curly Mop are both safely ensconced at daycare.

In theory, this is my first day of work as a writer.  In theory I am at liberty to do my homework, read books, write blogs, plan my novel and seek work experience.  In theory I have a full, uninterrupted day to gather inspiration, nurture my craft and purge it into the void.  I have been waiting for this day for months.

Unfortunately I had not counted on today being the first day that the builders need to access the inside of my house.  It's one thing to have them crawling over the scaffolding and banging in the roof space.  It's an entirely different matter to have them wandering through my living room and pausing to chat each time they walk past me at my computer.

I don't know how this 'working from home' thing is going to go while my 'office' is at the kitchen table and the room next door is ground zero for dust, noise and tradesmen's crack (aka builder's bum).  However, if I plan on being a tortured writer (and what's the point of being a writer if you aren't tortured), I suppose having to deal with adversity and distraction (and dust) will only add to the pain and as a result, the finished product.

 

All Quiet on the Western Front

And so they have finished for the year.  Tools have been laid down, the skip emptied. The scaffolding has come partly down and removed offsite. The remaining tarp blows lonely in the breeze.  The builders have gone back to their own families for Christmas.

I have been quite used to having them around, an endless parade of men in short shorts and big boots.

Now the temporary clean-up can start.  I started with the dead bird in the carport, though I hope that had nothing to do with the builders.  I can blame them for the empty drink bottles and cans dotted through my rose garden and the occasional cigarette butt under the scaffolding (it says No Smoking On Site guys!).  I think it's cute that I keep finding bits of Gladwrap along with the Red Rooster litter, someone must bring his lunch from home. 

I collected a Bunnings store worth of nails and screws and other bits of functional metal, and dumped them in a box next to the broken bags of cement, spilling into little piles on my verandah.  Although it's not really my verandah at the moment.  Nothing here is ours until everything is finished, and the last piece of scaffolding has been removed, the last sign packed away. 

I want the weather to cool so I can begin to sweep away 6 weeks worth of sawdust and brick dust.  That's all it's been - 6 short weeks and a new house has sprung up where once there was nothing.  I have floors and external walls, a new roof, windows, the skeleton of the plumbing and electrics and what looks likes hundreds of dirty little sheep shoved in between the timbers of the roof (apparently it's insulation).

                                                                         Before                                                                                              

                                                                          During


So to my friendly builders, thanks for building us a house!  Merry Christmas and I will see you in the New Year.

Acceptance Speech

Good evening.  I am here to humbly accept the award for most prolific writer.  When I first started this blogging gig, I sometimes worried I would not have enough to write about.  However, we then started doing some major renovations, and those worries disappeared.

So I would like to thank my builders for continually giving me material to write about.  It's as though they are implicitly supporting my quest to be a writer.

I mean, why else would they disconnect the power to my bore and reticulation so that my garden died in the summer heat.  Why else would they take almost a fortnight to fix it, so that by the time they reconnected the power, the pump had rusted and seized so that it doesn't work anymore anyway.

Unless they were providing their support to my burgeoning writing career, why else would they disconnect the power to my kitchen and laundry in the process of reconnecting the bore and retic.

Surely coming home to no fridge, washing machine, kettle or toaster was simply their way to provide yet another opportunity for me to sit down and hone my writing skills (in this case a letter of complaint - because all writing is good practice). 

So in closing, I would again like to acknowledge my builders for their tireless, behind the scenes support.

Keep up the good work guys.

Time Stops for No Mum

There is more than a grain of truth to the saying 'time flies when you are having fun' and even more in the saying [which I just invented] 'time stops when everything sucks'.

Yesterday three things happened. 

Firstly, nothing happened.  On the house that is.  All day the wind blew through the tarps, making them flap upwards a bit like a can-can dancer flashing her knickers.  Occasionally I thought there were men up there, walking on the roof.  But alas, it was just the wind and some rather alarmingly high stacks of roof tiles.  After all the action and progress of the first three weeks, this week has been rather quiet and lonely. 

Secondly, my eldest daughter turned three and a half.  So we threw an impromptu surprise party for her, complete with invitations, balloons, and party hats.  As Aunty C. pointed out, she is now halfway to 7.  Uncle N. followed this up by saying she is one sixth of the way to 21.  My baby can't be 21!

Thirdly, I went to Kindy orientation, as my baby, who is halfway to 7, will be going 'big school' in the New Year.  I still remember the day I found out I was pregnant with her.  I still remember the day she was born.  I remember the first day she crawled.  She can't be going to school already.

A friend and I stood in the Kindy playground last night, in the dark, discussing how we are fighting to slow time down.  With our eldest children off to school, and our youngest coming up to their first birthday in a matter of weeks, we can feel this special time slipping away.  The time of having a Baby.  Before they are walking and become toddlers.  Before they start throwing tantrums.  Before they start talking (and talking back).  While they still have those fat rolls on their thighs and they can still put their feet in their mouths.  Before they have a mouth of teeth.  While you still count their age in months, not years.

So a plea to keeper of time, speed up the building process, but slow down the aging process.  I'd like to keep my baby for a bit longer please.

Renovate or gestate?

Last night I stood in my new bedroom.  Sure, it didn't have walls or a ceiling.  Or a bed.  But it actually looked like a room and felt like a room and it was very exciting. 

There wouldn't be much privacy should you want to spend the night, because the tarps no longer fit over the top much like clothes no longer fitting over your tummy when you are 9 months pregnant, but after only two and a half weeks, there is now a recognizable house up there.

After a painfully long conception (I'm just going to keep on with the pregnancy analogy) while we battled with the local council about what we were and weren't allowed to do (no designer baby for us), things have happened rather quickly.  I guess this is like 'showing' early on in pregnancy. 

But I am prepared for the fact that it probably is all show at the moment, and the rest of the build will drag on forever. 

The first few weeks have been sheer hell, the noise and stress and frustration is the home renovators' version of morning sickness.  Being woken early, not by nausea but by the sounds of tarps blowing in the wind or the sound of an air compressor starting outside the window.

Then I imagine we will enter the second trimester.  The house will begin to look like a house.  People will begin to compliment us on how well it looks.  The final payment won't yet be due, so it won't be so unwieldy that we can no longer walk (or afford food).  We will feel energised as we can imagine the finished product and what colours we should decorate it with.

Then we will hit the final trimester.  The interest repayments will begin to swell up, and we will start retaining discount vouchers and coupons in order to save money.  Instead of screaming 'get this baby out of me' I will be screaming 'give me a hammer and a paintbrush... let me up there!'

Finally will come the day we can move in.  We will think it's all finished and done, but it won't be.  Instead of nappies and breastfeeding, there will be carpeting and painting.  But until that day, I can continue to look forward to sleeping in my new bedroom, one storey closer to the stars, a new addition that will change our family forever.

How to Sleep Like a Baby

'So where exactly is your baby sleeping?', the nice builder man asked me.  We had a plan of the house in front of us, and I jabbed at the corner of her bedroom where her cot was located.

'Oh that'll be ok then', he said.  'At worst, some plaster might come down on her change table though...'

For some inexplicable reason, my 10 month old had decided to go back to sleep after her morning feed.  The same 10 month old who is not normally known for her predilection for sleeping, had fallen asleep and stayed asleep during the most incredible noise - men walking on the roof, throwing tiles, air compressors, hammering, shouting...

We had been told that we should make ourselves scarce this week, as the roof was fully removed, the air conditioning uninstalled and reinstalled, and the new floor hammered into place.  'It might be a bit loud', they had told us.  'You might want to get the kids out'.

No worries.  Last night I had packed the portacot, the laptop, a basket of clothes and nappies and toys, three meals for the baby and one for me, and I had planned on abandoning ship long before 7.30am. 

The only thing I had forgotten was to tell the baby. 

And so she was sleeping, like the proverbial baby.  In a room that was literally shaking as the men hammered posts outside her window, and removed the roof from above her head.  There was dirt showering down on her ceiling, and circles of sunlight showed around her light fittings.

Maybe that is the secret to a sleeping baby. Noise and lots of it.  Either it creates a sense of nostalgia of sounds from inside the womb.  Or perhaps she was awake and crying all the time and I simply couldn't hear her over all the noise.

My house as a ship

I came home today and the roof had disappeared, replaced by billowing red and blue tarps, attached tentatively to my house by a few ropes.

Even in the modest breeze it feels like a gale is blowing and it sounds like... actually I don't really know how to describe the hollow, ominous noise of dozens of massive tarps flapping and whipping in the wind.  When the wind rises and the tarps blow up, I can actually see the skeleton of my house.  I feel so vulnerable and unprotected.

With the massive scaffolding surrounding my house like a metal and wood rigging, and the tarps filling like sails, I can imagine the house literally floating away in the next stiff breeze.  It's all very Peter Pan.

I just hope that this particular adventure is not one of the 'ever-after' sorts, and we get to keep our feet on the ground.

It's hot out there

I currently have two, half naked young men, liberally covered in tattoos lounging on my front verandah.  Some of you may think I am the luckiest girl in the world, others may shudder at the thought.

Today the scaffolding is being erected: a great spider web of concrete covered metal attached to my house. 

There have been a lot of alarming sounds, from small metal objects pinging against the windows, to the thud of heavy wooden beams being dropped on bricks, and what sounds like war cries coming from the guys as they stand on my roof.  The three and a half year old Blonde Bombshell tells me they are 'hurting the house'.

It's the hottest day in months, at least 38 degrees.  Neither of them have hats or sunglasses... or clothes apparently.  Their shorts - commonly known as stubbies - are not leaving much to the imagination.  Their lack of shirts mean we can see their dragon 'drawings' all over their arms and backs, which the Bombshell finds quite fascinating.

But despite their otherwise apparent lack of sun-sense, I did see one of them liberally slather himself in suncream, which the Bombshell pointed out to me.  She said she was very proud of him.  Being about nineteen years of age, I doubt the compliments of a preschooler impressed him much.  But perhaps it means that tomorrow he might be wearing a shirt!

Waiting for God Knows What

It's the waiting that gets you.  The not knowing. 

Today, allegedly, is the first full day of our new building project.  I say allegedly, because it's almost 10.00am and the only the thing that has happened is that our neighbour occasionally sticks his head out to see if anything interesting is happening.
It's not.

More than 18 months ago, literally a lifetime ago, my husband and I sat down and decided we would add some rooms upstairs.  We are planning for the distant future, when we have two (or possibly three?) teen aged children.  I remember being a teenager.  I was hideous.  And there is no way I want to be sharing a bathroom with two (or possibly three?) hideous teenage girls.  My husband doesn't even like sharing a bathroom with them now.

And let's be honest, they won't be moving out before they're 30.  I don't see how anyone will be able to afford houses in the future, so assuming that we will be sharing the house with multiple offspring, boyfriends and girlfriends, hangers-on, cousins, aunties, exchange students and the inevitable dog, I will need at least a few more walls separating me from them.  And my own bathroom.

I won't be naming the company we engaged, just in case this whole process is all too much and I start slandering them accidentally on purpose.  But today was meant to be the first day on site.  I was expecting truck loads of tradies, mountains of materials, a chorus of curses and a glamorous porta-loo to converge on our property and start building my new life.  Nothing. 

You know the scene from Westerns, where the birds circle overhead in complete silence.   That's us.

I don't know why I am so surprised.  It's not as though anything has gone smoothly up to this point (but that's the subject of another post).  Yet I continue to hope, and I continue to wait.  Hopefully I will have something to report soon. 

(5 second later)

My god!  There is a man outside my window. And yes, it is a builder and not some random peeping tom. Talk about heart attack. 

And that, dear readers, is why we must never lose hope.