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!

Oh Joy, Oh Rapture!

Well, I survived International Talk Like A Pirate Day but it was a close run thing!

Anyways, back to the house...

The blog title for this post come from the first thing that ran through my head when I recieved an email from my Client Liasion Officer (ahh, I still chuckle when I say that) at Ventura the relevant part in the email was this line "Just a note to let u know that you have a new supervisor, his name is Darren *******".

Oh whoopie! ANOTHER supervisor, that now brings my total to 3 supervisors, and 3 Client Liasion Officers (although my CLO's have changed FOUR times, but the last change was back to a previous CLO, go figure).

Just how (and who!) do they think this helps? In a 12 month period expecting your supervisor to change is not unreasonable, but THREE times?! And we are only 6 weeks away from finishing (and we have been for 8 weeks, damn PES).

That aside the orange haired simian I have for a plumber has been back and fixed the dishwasher water outlet, placing it in its correct position, and the kitchen guys have been back and replaced the kitchen (after having to take most of it out for the plumber). So this is good.

The tilers have tiled the ensuite (although not yet grouted it) and I just f*****g give up. "1 row of tiles above the vanity" its a fairly simple instruction, nothing too difficult to understand, no complex sub rules to interpret or anything in that statement, SO WHY THE HELL did the tiler install 1 row of half tiles?!

Its possible that laying the tiles like that means there is less tile cutting else where around the bath when lining the tiles up or something... well guess what, I dont care, I want the place built like I asked, not built however is easiest for the builder.

Mood Assessment for Today: Grumpy, Tired, Annoyed.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

www.talklikeapirate.com

Its also known in my house as "If You Dare Talk like a Pirate for the Whole Day, You'll Get a Wooden Leg Up Your Roger" Day, or IYDTLAPFTWDYGAWLUYR Day, which is quite pithy don't you think.

I will refrain from making any of the obvious snide comments about Pirates and todays Builders...

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I have little to say on the house at the moment, hopefully as I speak (type?) the orangu tang ... err I mean plumber... is moving the dishwasher cold water tap to its correct position, and the tilers are, well, tiling.

More to follow... as always.

PES in full swing

Well the Tiler turned up as planned, on time and ready to go... bugger me! We had a quick chat about where the tiles were going and which bits had the feature/border tiles and which didn't and they were off. By the end of the first day they had built the hobs around the two baths and under the vanities, screed both floors and waterproofed the showers. I was impressed. I was less impressed when my supervisor told me that the tiler work work Thursday and Friday and then take a week off to go do another job before coming back to finish ours.

But as it turns out they can't do much work next week anyway because half of the kitchen has to be taken out and the dishwasher main water pipe has to be moved because my stupid plumber (whom I am now convinced beyond any doubt is either blind or an Orang Utang) placed it inside the dishwasher recess and not to one side as it should be. With the pipe in its current position it would not be possible to turn the tap off with out removing the dishwasher first, and of course you cannot remove the dishwasher without turning the tap off, so go figure. Seriously, I swear I saw a banana peel on the rubbish heap out front the other day....

Good news on the retaining wall issue though. I had a phone call from my Client Liason Officer who told me to remove the old asbestos fence within 2 weeks and Ventura will organise the retaining wall to be moved to the correct position. A small win, but a significant one since it now gives us about 400mm more space down one side.

That's about all I can manage today, its 9:00am and I am too tired to even work up the energy to rant about the house. I ended up playing Simcity 4 for far to long last night (I have vague memories of it being around 2am when I got to bed - which hurts when you are up are out of the house at 6:45am for work). I'm just a software engineer, I have little need to be up so early to get to work, but my wife works on Rottnest as the Newsagency Manager and she has to catch the 7:30 boat from Fremantle so we have a rather strict, unmissable, deadline :-)


I'm off to get another coffee. . . or 3
Take care.

The PES of house building

Well it would seem that we are in the PES (Perpetual End Stage) of house building....

Definition:
PES - The state a house ends up in when the end of the construction is in sight, but the date supplied to the house owner by the builder is forever moving just out of reach, this situation is also known as "The End of The Raindow" Stage - you can see it, but you never get any closer to it!

For the last few weeks I have politely asked when the house would be finished since I have a Tiler, a Painter, a Carpet Layer and a Candlestick Maker to book (ok, maybe not the last one), I have a rent agreement in my current residence to get out of, I need to book some time off work to move houses etc etc. The first time I asked 4 weeks ago I was told "6-8 weeks" which was excellent. The next time I asked (2 weeks ago) I was told "6-8 weeks", hmmm, and this morning when I asked I was told "6-8 weeks". I'm starting to see a pattern here..... If next week I get the same answer I'm going to get somewhat grumpy. I get to such a point at times that I seriously think about using the same tactic when the final bill comes for the house completion:

Ventura: "Dear householder, we see that your final account is due, could you pay it please"
Me: "Certainly, I'll pay it within 8-10 days."
Ventura: "Dear householder, your account is now 10 days overdue, could you pay it please"
Me: "Certainly, I'll pay it within 8-10 days."
repeat....

I'm sure they would see the funny side of it and we would all end up around a coffee table having a good old laugh about it... seriously...

And even after all we have been through (not exactly a Himalayan Expedition or anything, but bad enough) some things still amaze me. What we are waiting on at the moment is the Ventura Tiler to tile the bathrooms, but apparently NOTHING else can get done and everything has to halt now until the tiler has finished. When I asked as to why the kitchen cupboards could not be finished, or why the insulation cannot get installed, or why the electrical work could not be completed, or why the external earthworks and paving could no be started I was told that "The tiler is the next trade booked in to do work and he has be delayed"... so?! The above things I have listed don't effect the tiler at all, but apparently because the tiler is the next trade to go into the house everyone else must wait. Just Amazing.

The other beef I have at the moment aside from the builder's inability to plan tasks in parallel, is the builders insistence that the house must be built "to plan", i.e. absolutely no undocumented changes. Actually I totally agree with this, if home owners changed house plans on a whim then chaos would result (more chaos then is currently apparent in the building industry I mean). The problem is that when the builder says that the house must be built "to plan", what they appear to mean is that the house must be built to plan only if it is convenient to them but if its easier for them to change something then to build it according to plan then they will, on a whim.

This whole issue came about like this:
1) When the house was being drafted I asked for the phone point to be moved from the kitchen to a point in the roof above the garage (in anticipation of the smart wiring we were installing).
2) The drafter didn't get this amendment and stupidly I didn't pick it up on the plans and so the phone point wasn't moved and it ended up being installed in the kitchen.
3) I don't really care as it can be moved easily enough afterwards, but I did point out that I had communicated with the builder that the phone point should have been put somewhere else (I even provided a copy of the email within which I requested the phone point be moved).
4) The builder replied saying that the phone point is shown on the plan as being in the kitchen and so that is were it must be installed, it can't be changed as things must be built according to the plans.
5) That got me thinking and I have now insisted on several minor things to be fixed that are not according to the plans. They are in the whole minor things that I was going to let slide, but if the builder is going to use the "must be built to plan" card then they must back it up.

There are 3 issues I know of that are not correct according to the signed drawings, two of them are minor and one if fairly major and if the builder is reasonable I am willing to let the two minor ones slide so I get the major one fixed.

The 3 issues are:
1) The Lounge room wall vent, for those of you that have been with me since the start of this blog you will know that the wall vent in the lounge room was never installed while the bricks were being laid, even though the one in the family room WAS installed. Well finally they have come and cut out a hole in the wall to install the vent in the lounge room, however it would appear they have chosen the most convenient wall (for them) to install the vent in, and they have not installed it where it is shown on the SIGNED architectural drawings.
2) The Kitchen benchtop is shown on all of the SIGNED plans as having a straight edge to it where it ends, the one that has been installed has a gently curve to it.
3) The retaining wall is shown on the SIGNED plans as being on the boundary, it was installed about 500mm inside the boundary

As you can see 1) and 2) are fairly minor and I don't mind if they stay the way they are, but with the retaining wall being so far inside the boundary 3) is a fairly big issue, the block is damn narrow to being with and every centimetre counts in the width.

What has happened with the wall (the reason it is inside the boundary so far) is that there is already an old asbestos fence on that boundary and it was incorrectly laid about 300mm inside the actual boundary many many years ago, so when the tradesmen came along to install the wall instead of thinking "Hmmm we cant install the retaining wall according to the plans, lets talk to the home owner and see what we can arrange" they just went and installed it inside the old asbestos fence, making it about 500mm inside the boundary.

Essential Ventura (the builder) has broken the contract that we both signed. Since we have signed hardcopy plans, it is reasonable to expect that those plans be followed, or if for some reason that is not possible then both parties should sign a memorandum to that effect and sign an appended copy of the plans, its not up the the builder to do as they wish. At least that is my position on this. If they are going to be stubborn then I will insist on 1) 2) and 3) be reverted back to plan, if they are reasonable and are prepared to discuss things then I am happy with just the retaining wall being fixed.

So here we go again...


This Just In
My new supervisor called about 10 minutes ago saying that the Tiler will be on site and starting work from about 7:30 onwards as of this Thursday (the 7th of September). So maybe, just maybe the next time frame I get for house completion will be the correct one... maybe..