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!!)