Some progress has been made.
As you know we have a new supervisor now (our third) and the word from him, relayed to us via our Client Liasion Officer (almost our third) is that our PCI Meeting should be on the 20th of October. Now if any one knows just what 'PCI' stands for I would love to know, as I doubt in this case that it stands for Periphial Connection Interface. I sat here trying to think up some amusing building related acronyms that PCI might stand for, but came up blank (I came up with a couple, but nothing I would print on a public web page!).
Still with that in mind I am going to take a bit of a gamble and book my tiler in for 8th of Novmeber and my painter for the 2nd of November. Whilst the tiler is a little flexible the painter is not and the only times he has free are either the 2nd of November or the 16th of Janurary (and considering he will only charge $2500 for the job - dulux top range paint included - I am willing to work with him on a time). The guy is a painter by trade and would normally charge around $3500 to $4000 for a similar job but since he is also the captain of my hockey team things have worked out really well (I'll provide the bourbon and cokes for afterward).
We went and bought a dishwasher and fridge on the weekend also... Damn there are a lot of choices. Whilst we pretty much already knew what we wanted (Fisher and Paykel, Stainless Steel finish, and the dishwasher is a dishdrawer) we still had to look at the other choices and see if what we did want was an OK choice for us. We figured that a full size dishwasher is a little bit of an over kill for two people, it would take a week to fill the damn thing with dishes (and I don't have that may dishes), so this way with a 2 drawer dishdrawer we only need to fill one drawer for a 'full' load. And if we are going to by a F&P dishwasher we may as well buy a F&P fridge. So we ended up with a 520 litre stainless steel monster (with a monster price too - ouch!) that is going to be a bugger to get into the kitchen. The price was $1400 for the dishwasher and $1700 for the fridge and whilst they are great prices (a F&P Dishdrawer is around 1600-1700) we, frankly, could have got something for nearly half the price, but I have a F&P top loading washing machine which for 9 years has not missed a single beat, and Mum's F&P washing machine was be going strong for 14 years and is basically indestructible and I'm prepared to pay for that sort of quality and trust, plus the curved stainless steel finishes to both machines looks great (god help anyone who touches it without gloves though! :) )
For those loyal readers who have been following this blog for a while (hi mum!) you should remember the trouble we had a little while ago with the retaining wall, and the fact that it was quite a way in from the boundary (and not where it should have been). So after a couple of letters and phone calls where I insisted that the builder build according to the signed plans, they agreed to move the retaining wall to the correct position provided I organised the removal of the asbestos fence first. Not a problem says I and I set about organising it. I rang the fence guy, and he remembered my quote, said that he would get someone out to look at it and remove the fence on the 20th (last Wednesday). Great I thought, and I let Ventura know the fence would be gone. Well guess what, its in now the 27th and as of last night the fence was still up!! Brilliant! After months of having a go at Ventura always running things over time and not being able to organise things, it all comes back and bites me on the backside! I have been promised that the fence WILL be down and removed today, but then again I was promised it would be down on the 20th and then the 22nd, and then the 25th, so I'm not holding out much hope....
The tiling which was started 2 weeks ago has still not been done either, for some reason after laying all of the tiles, and grouting the Ensuite they have gone off on a holiday some where and left the bathroom tiles ungrouted. Go Figure. I have to say that aside from that slowness the tilers seem quite excellent. Their laying and tile cutting is brilliant. They have cut holes out of the tiles for the taps, power points, and drains with millimetre precision, I'm impressed, I wish the plumber was as good, he has trouble getting the taps on the right wall!
So, bring on the 20th of October!
