Builders & why I hate them

[Llama8]

I don't trust builders, granted my wife & I have been rather stupid (for a pair of intelligent people, we have a rather worrying lack of common sense), but that still doesn't excuse some of the behaviour of the builders...

~3-4 years ago we moved in to our house, a medium/large 3 bed victorian semi-detached (ie, attached to nextdoor on one side), we knew that there would be a fair bit of redecoration to do as the previous owners hadn't done much & it was decorated in, shall we say, OAP style & the kitchen was ~20 years old (they had the same dishwasher my parents bought when I was a kid). Not great, but liveable with until we could afford to have it replaced.

The first thing we did was have the front room redecorated (from pale green walls & flowery curtains), we used someone that my wife knew (friend of a friend), he was a pain in the arse to get hold of & he'd not turn up for the first 3 times that he said he would but then everything would go smoothly. That went reasonably well so we used him to redo the back garden which was dangerously in need of ripping out since it was actively dangerous given that G was ~9 months pregnant at the time. Again, everything went fairly well with the sole exception of a tree stump that they didn't remove & after a few months it was beginning to lift the paving stones nearby. I think we've dealt with it (by cutting throug the relevant roots) since I've not seen any growth on it in the past year.

Next up (a year or so ago) a "company" came round & said that they were paving over some drives in the area & would we like ours done. Since my car was parked on the road & had been keyed & had both wing mirrors ripped off, we said yes. A few grand later we had some nice parking for our cars & no more grass to mow out front. What we didn't realise at the time was that they'd put the paving all the way up to the house & had built up over the damp course (a barrier that prevents water from being absorbed up into the mortar & rising up the house). Where the incredible stupidity comes in is that we didn't get a guarantee from them & can't find the "receipt" that they gave us...

Just before Christmas '09, we had our kitchen redone, the total we were quoted was expensive, but achievable & we took out a loan to cover what we didn't have the savings for & work started. After they'd ripped everything out & replastered the walls (we'd agreed that it needed doing & would cost ~2k), they said that they needed to pay the plasterer for that, we said that it was included in the total figure they'd given us for the kitchen, they said no, the (expensive) figure they'd quoted for the kitchen covered the kitchen, not the other stuff. Right, so a "total" isn't a "total"... Legally they were correct though & since we didn't have a kitchen (Jonny can attest to the fun of washing stuff up in the bath), they kinda had us over a barrel without lube. Other things they'd "forgotten" to include in the "total":
a)the skip, apparently though the itemised bill included disposal, that didn't cover the skip rental, 'cause we might like to cart an entire kitche's worth of **** to the local dump ourselves.
b)the fridge, we'd discussed throughout the planning stage that we wanted a nice big fridge & they'd even put it in the drawings, but apparently they (or their supplier who was doing the kitchen/units) thought that we would be supplying it ourselves.
Contrary to the normal generalisations, the guy doing the building work was very good, concientious & managed to turn up every day including the ~2-3 days that had (for us) very heavy snow fall (so heavy that most of the country ground to a halt, took me ~3hrs to get home from work rather than the normal 30 mins), the back office admin however was a shower of ****. If you're going to give someone a piece of paper with the word "total" on it, it should be the total (unless it's preceeded by "sub-"). And they tried to overcharge us for the new flooring. Having said that, I trust the builder (if not his wife doing the admin) & we might use them when we want to have our loft converted, better the devil you know & we can work round her "totals"...

Needless to say, after a year of rain & a breached damp course, we've got some very bad damp in the front bay window, my wife works for an insurance company so they sent one of their loss adjusters round (yesterday) & he said that worst case (if there were rising damp & rotting floorboards), there'd need to be repairs in the region of £10k, though he wasn't a damp specialist & that was in the worst case scenario. Queue lots of stress & lack of sleep last night, worry that we couldn't afford that after the kitchen almost putting us in penury but that if we didn't the house would rot out from underneath us, fortunately no recrimination or arguing between G & myself. Repairs would at a minimum include ripping up the drive nearest the house & putting in some proper drainage (ie, what there was there before the drive people came in & built over it), replastering the affected parts of the walls & (possibly) replacing floorboards & the wood (joists?) that they rest on if necessary (worst case). Rentokil came round today & after an hour & a half said that we did have very bad damp, but the floorboards weren't rotten & repairs (drainage, replastering & so on) would likely be in the range of £1-£3k, not great, but around what we thought it would cost & something we can cope with.

Sorry for the rant & sorry for the poorly formatted wall of text...

[Stubbie]

Wow Llama.
The fun and games of home ownership.
At least at the end of it all you can sell up for a big profit and move into a retirement village.

Thankfully we realised some years ago that any more renovating to our home would be wasted money due to the generally low cost of real estate in our area.

Your problem with the idiots covering up the damp course is not the first time I have heard of that happening. Even if you found a receipt or had a "guarantee" you would probably find that the company was no longer in business anyway.

A lot of heartache and damage to the old bank account but in the end you will have a beautiful and comfortable home you can enjoy.

Thanks for sharing your story with us mate.

ps...

(they had the same dishwasher my parents bought when I was a kid).

all we had was mum

[FrostElfGuard]

Originally Posted by Stubbie

ps...

all we had was mum

All we had was mum... and then mum arranged for us boys to (the 3 of us) to replace us in weekly rotation... that is: each boy1 did the dishes for a week, then boy2, then boy3... then back to boy1 (and so on)!

Sorry to hear of your woes with builders/repairers/workmen.

Everybody's got to eat (the workmen too)... and everybody's got to learn how to negotiate (that's on us).

Things in England cost a lot of money!!! Wow!

But, here in Canada we had our roof repaired for about $8000... now the squirrels can't just walk in... which is great... There are a lot of things I would repair in the place if I could (I'm just renting from friends)... if I were part owner all my money would go into the house. The carpets, the bathrooms, the lack of insulation (very important for a house in center of north america... it gets very very cold here.... the heating bill is over $1700/month in the depth of winter!)

I'm glad not to have to deal with all these expenses!!

re: your deals: I would visit the library and learn all there is to learn about dealing with tradesmen before I made a deal with the next one. Not joking here: Is there a "Dummies Guide to Home Repairs for UK"? I find the Dummies series takes the boredom out of learning new stuff. They inject humour on top of the dry material presented. Just a thought!

[purringcat]

Thanks for sharing your story Llama. I'd never heard of a damp course and there's good advice on what constitutes 'total'. As for the guarantee, it doesn't do much good when the average business turnover is about five years.