So I haven’t been arrested… That’s good.

Well, one good thing came out of Thursdays on-site meeting with Ventura…. I wasn’t arrested for throttling anyone J

Now, on to the meeting itself. I must admit from the start that I approached the meeting prepared for a minor confrontation, I had emails backing up the claims I had previously made and dates for everything etc, which may have been a bit over the top but this is my house and I want it built properly. But when I got there at 8:30 (on one of the coldest damn mornings of the year! It was freezing!) he was there waiting for me, he greeting me and explained that he thought he would call this meeting so he could personally take me through the issues I had raised and sort them out with me. And bugger me, he actually did.

He explained that the guys that laid the concrete slab no longer work for Ventura and that he had organised with the plumber to do the required work at Ventura’s cost. Finally after 4 and a half months I have some resolution to this issue, yay! Unfortunately things went just a little bit down hill from there (and only a little bit, nothing too serious was encountered).

The recess box for the hot water unit was apparently a fault of the Scheduling Department, who forgot to order it and therefore the brickie never installed it (buck passing I thought, considering when I first pointed out the lack of the hot water unit recess, which was during the construction of the brick walls… but anyway I digress). The solution he has arranged is to have a hole cut out of the wall and have the brickies come back and face up the bricks that require it, now of course I would have preferred it installed by now but you can’t have everything in life you want can you.

And then I took him though a new list of issues I had that was written up from the day before when my wife and myself went through the house and noted a few things down.
1) The dishwasher recess has power to it (which is good) and water from the mains (which is good) as is required for a dishwasher unit, however it does NOT have an waste water drain for the waste water to go down (which is bad). The supervisor said it was because most people have the dishwasher under their sink and can tap directly into the kitchen waster water pipe (our recess is bout 1.5 metres away due to the way the kitchen has worked out). I pointed out that that wasn’t any good to me and I didn’t want a piece of polypipe running around my kitchen cupboards for the dishwasher, I wanted proper plumbing. He said he would fix it.

2) The shower in the bathroom is placed into one corner of the room against two walls and the plumber has managed to install the taps and shower head on the wrong wall! Seriously, even without the plans these guys had a 50% chance of getting it right. I’m beginning to doubt that they can read.

3) We have two gas outlets in the house for gas heating, one in the family room and one in the lounge room. Both are clearly shown on the plans as being close to the edge of each wall (within 300mm of the edge of the wall in fact), and both have been installed slap bang in the middle of the wall! Now I can understand (and accept) if they were a foot or two out, but both of these are over 2 metres out of place!! The reason they were put near the edge of the walls was so we could place furniture (namely couches) against the wall. I am now beginning to doubt that the plumber even had the plans with him at the time.

That’s 3 fairly biggish issues that need fixing but he did seem fairly earnest in wanting to fix them for me so I am hoping all will go well…. I’m ever the optimist I know.

On the plus side he said that he has booked lock-up for next week (week starting the 23rd of June) and the house should be finished 8-10 weeks after that, which brings us to mid-October which is pretty much when we were promised it would be done when we signed the contract, so that is very pleasing. I’m not going to hold my breath (namely because that is like 12 weeks away and I’m not Superman or anything, and because I am not yet ready to full believe Ventura) but things are looking hopeful. He did warn me however that that time frame was dependant on the availability of a Tiler who are in great demand appearently.

Still, I was feeling fairly good after the meeting. So until next time take care (and yes, I will one day get around to putting photos up, promise!!)

He's not the Messiah, He's a very naughty boy....

I am SO riled up at the moment (or more accurately I was when I wrote this a day or so ago), I need to find a defenceless kitten to yell at or something.

I just had a phone call from Ventura (a stand in Client LIASON(HA!) officer) today. She wants to book a on-site meeting between me and my brick supervisor which we have pencilled it in for 13th Thursday.

During the phone call she mentioned (in no particular order):
The concrete contractors who did my slab are no longer doing business with Ventura anymore (have I mentioned recently that the concrete issue STILL hasnt been fixed!!). Some other contractor will have to come in and complete the slab. She mentioned something about once they have been Ventura will need to sort out payment for them (I wasn't paying much attention so I'm not sure if she meant Ventura internally had to sort something out - if so why tell me? - , or if I was being told because I might have to handle the expense of the new contractor... Good effing luck on that, I'm NOT paying a cent).

She then mentioned the fact that apparently I'm a naughty boy (not her words I might add) for having the building inspection before the roof was fully complete AND then having the gall to include non-completed work in my report, she said that Glen requested I work a bit closer with him to organise my inspections..... I snapped at that point and developed a funny facial twitch.... WORK CLOSER !?, I don't know if I should scream or laugh at the moment!!! HOW THE BLOODY HELL CAN I WORK CLOSER IF THEY NEVER F**KING REPLY TO ANY OF MY MAILS OR BOTHER TO INFORM ME ON ANYTHING! And what the f**k is his problem any way even if I do do the inspection a few days early and the roof isn't bloody well finished! I'll damn well include it in my report and he can simply ignore it (as he has been doing for months with the slab anyway!) GRRRR!! *ok calm down, breath deeply, count to 10*

So now I have to take another day off work to meet with the supervisor at his request..... I might get dad to come out for the meeting, just to there is a witness to the 'justifiable homicide' when I strangle the supervisor.

Tempting.... really tempting....


In other news the gyprock ceilings and plumbing went in yesterday so it must have been one busy day on site (either that or they were working on Sunday), and the progress is looking good.

At this point in the construction I'm not sure what the supervisor is hoping to solve by having a meeting since we are pretty much on the downhill run, and he is not going to stop me emailing and phoning if I damn well feel like emailing and phoning. Of course I could be going totally off tangent and the meeting is merely because he wants to discuss my colour choices for the paint or something..... Maybe...

We shall see..

Great Ironstone Roofing Batman!

Another stage down, another inspection completed. And this one went fairly well actually.

In the words of my building inspector the roof carpentry is “excellent” and “above spec” in many areas (like the use of long bolts instead of nails in some high load parts of the roof and using thicker stronger timber then the standard in areas). So that is quite good news.

However the colorbond sheeting on top of the roof carpentry is a different story. It would appear that the guys who laid it had to rush off somewhere before completing the job and only hand enough time to screw in the colorbond sheets with a couple of Tek screws…. Or they are really shonky. A typical example is a 15 metre ridge cap which has only 3 screws in it, 2 on one side and 1 on the other…. I could pull that off with my teeth! So that is the major “needs to be fixed” item on this inspection report. The rest is pretty good.

The plasterers finish putting up the interior concrete render yesterday, and boy does the place look dark and gloomy or what! Next week the ceiling will be installed and then its down to the plumbing and fittings (tiling, kitchen cupboards etc – windows in there somewhere..). According to my inspector the house is running pretty much on time, maybe even a little ahead of schedule in comparison to the other houses he is looking after, so perhaps all my complaining has gotten me some where (or am I doing Ventura an injustice here?....... nah I don’t think so).

The one thing that still makes me weep, which at this point has gone from being annoying to being a farce, is the concrete slab situation. The problem we had at the very start of construction when the slab was laid HAS STILL NOT BEEN FIXED. I’m not sure what it will take now to actually fix it, really it is pathetic, just pathetic.

Now I am faced with the situation that when (IF!) someone turns up to fix the concrete there is a strong possibility of damage to my now rendered walls and not to mention the amount of rocks and dust and s*#t that will get kicked up and not have anywhere to go to cause the roof and ceiling are on.

So currently my mood swings between happy, cause the roof is basically good, to down right filthy at the amazing contempt and stupidness of the builder in fixing an issue that has been highlighted since the slab went down 4 months ago.

Oh well… time for ANOTHER letter to Ventura asking about this… again.