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..

All praise the (nearly) almight Google.

The main reason I'm writing this post is simply because I can write it using Google's new Writely word processor (all hail the mighty Google!).

Writely (www.writely.com) is a online word processor that allows direct posting to a number of blogs (blogger being on of them) and considering my usual posting habit was to write everything up in MS Word first and then cut and paste into the blogger text field to post, this is much more fun.. if it works.

I already use Gmail (mail.google.com) as my primary mail client, and since it has become available I have been using Google Spreadsheets (spreadsheet.google.com) to store all of my house budget stuff (progress payments, item costs, quotes etc), and its bloody brilliant. I can find out some info while at work, oad up my spread sheet via my web browser, edit it just like I would if I was using MS Excel, save it and then that afternoon when I get home I can load it up again via the web browser on my home computer. Anywhere that I have net access I can access my housing budget spreadsheet and update it at will (it supports complex formulas and multiple sheets per spreadsheet, just like Excel). Bloody. Brilliant.

And Google also has a online calendar app which I use to store and co-ordinate all of the housing stuff, its simple, clean and quick. What more could you need?

And all of this is access thru a web browser, no need to install any software, just log on and its there. wheeeee

Anyways, more on the house. Considering that after the house has gone into the lock-up stage (which mine has) access is meant to be restricted only to those people who need access to complete their work (ie not the house owner), it seems pretty stupid that they leave the front window unlocked doesn't it. So, using this conveniently placed entrance we (as in my wife and myself) took the opportunity to go through the house with a fine tooth comb and produce a list of things that we want looked at. We did this in anticipation of the next on-site meeting we are going to be having with Jeff (our NEW supervisor - I think we scared the other one off - which twit thought that changing supervisors 2 months before the end of the project was a good idea?!).

The list is depressingly substantial :( and it includes (and is not limited too) things such as:
· The laundry trough that has been delivered is 100% genuine plastic, pity really cause we asked for the steel one (as stated in our contract).
· Brick work in the garage has been damaged by a (possibly) blind bobcat driver.
· A Low Wall Vent that was cut into the lounge room wall at an angle of about 25 degrees from the horizontal.
· A retaining wall that has been built about 30cm (1 foot) off the boundary, as apposed to building it on the boundary as shown on plans
· and many more.

Still, on the bight side we have chosen our carpets and tiling, and have narrowed down our paint colours to only a few now, and most importantly the pile of bricks on our block is starting to feel like a home, and its even starting to look like one.

Onthe not so bright side we also had a look at lighting the other day. Ouch. These puppies are expensive, especially when some require electricians to install them. Still we found the most perfect light for our bedroom, its so perfect would appear to have been made with only our bedroom in mind, so the wife is most happy :-)


EDIT: Grrrrr. Ok, after waiting a day and a half for Writely to automatically publish my post (something it reports as having done successfully) and Blogger to display my new post (something ti has no knowledge of it seems), I have had to do the good old cut and paste technique I was trying to avoid... Bugger.... I need to work on this a bit more and figure out why it didn’t post as planned.

Damn you Google, here is me praising your virtues and you go and hand me an omelette to place over my face... and you were doing so well too up to this moment of failure!!
(Still Writely is only in beta at the moment, so it might improve).

6 weeks to go and carpets chosen!

Well the house has been locked up and my supervisor has given me a deadline of approximately 6 weeks until the house is completed. I’m not going to hold my breath, but its looking positive especially since they have a tiler organised.

There are still some issues that need sorting out (surprise surprise!) such as:
1) The dishwasher issue (lack of waste water drain) is still an issue and nothing has been heard from Ventura on this matter (again – surprise, surprise)
2) A wall vent was installed sometime last week in the lounge room on an angle of 25 degrees off the horizontal, very poor workmanship there.
3) The bobcat that was used to level the sand in the garage managed to quite badly and quite noticeably damage several brick in the garage

There are a few more issues, but I start to get far to0 depressed when I talk about them to0 much.

On a far more positive note I took a week of work last week (always a positive thing!) and between myself, my wife, several useless and sometimes downright rude sales staff (and the very rare amazingly helpful sales person – hello Ferguson from WA Carpet Supermarket in Osborne Park!) we managed to purchase the tiles and carpet for our house. Due to a stroke of good fortune the most perfect tile for our house was on sale down from $40 a square metre to $25 a square metre and considering we are tiling about 90 square metres of home this was a great saving, which we then ended up immediately losing by spending about $1000 more on carpet, so it all balanced out in the end and we came in only $40 over our $7000 budget (which includes the tiler).

I must say something about what we went through in choosing the carpet. We started at a place called WA Carpet Supermarket were we met Ferguson who actually took the time to sit down with us and our plans, measure everything out, talk to us about the general carpet types and the different underlay types, and all the pros and cons, unfortunately because it was the first carpet place we went to we left without making a choice. We then went to about 6 other carpet places before we realise that everyone stocks the same carpet brands at pretty much the same price so it didn’t matter really where we went. We ended up at Trevors Carpets because they supply carpet to most of the home builders in Perth and we got a builders discount on the carpet we wanted saving us about 10% and a free upgrade to the premium ‘platinum’ underlay. We almost bought the carpet there and then but we ended up going back to Ferguson to see what he could offer us (since he was so nice we though we would give him the chance for the sale) and it turns out that Trevors Carpets owns WA Carpet Supermarket so he could match the price cent for cent :-) So after every carpet store we went too we ended back at with the first place we saw, only we ended up with a more expensive carpet (15 year stain proof guarantee – oh yeah!).

Fun how things work out isnt it.

Now I have to go and try and talk to Ventura with out getting into an argument with them.

Take care and have fun people.

And when the music stops..

It seems to be Ventura’s policy to change supervisors at a whim, we have just been informed of the fact that our supervisor that has looked after (I use the term loosely here) the construction has been moved into a different department and we now have a new supervisor I have never met. Oh, and I use the term ‘informed’ in its most generous sense, where we actually only ‘informed’ when I asked for some information from the supervisor.

Same thing happened when my Client Liaison Officer went on four weeks holidays, I rang up and was asked to put me through to her and the front desk (without telling me) put me through to somebody else. It was only then after thinking I had the wrong person that she told me my CLO is on holiday and she was looking after my file. I know things are a little hectic in the building industry at the moment but just how hard is it for a CLO to send a group email to all of the clients he/she is looking after informing them they will be away and to talk to so and so if you have any queries? Seriously how hard is that? Or a quick email telling me that my supervisor has changed, instead of not bothering to tell me and letting me know only when you can no longer get away with NOT telling me, how damn hard is that! (in fact I timed myself doing just that, writing and email and sending it and it took me all of 30 secs – including the time for outlook to open – they are not THAT busy).

But this I fear seems to be currently typical with my builder Ventura Homes. The policy (as it appears to an outsider like myself) is something along the line of “Talk to the client before they sign the contract (to get them to sign), once signed build their house with as little interaction as possible, here by saving time and money by not having to fix things that we muck up”… or perhaps they are just anti-social people with anthropophobia?

Now, onto the house. Remember that dishwasher issue that I mentioned last time (power and mains plumbing supplied to dishwasher cavity but no waste water drain!), well it still has not been fixed and no solution proposed either (in fact it was about this that I wanted to talk to my supervisor about and was then informed he wasn’t my supervisor anymore).
On a more positive note, all of the doors arrived on Friday (28th August), on a not so positive note the glass window in one of the doors (the laundry door) is meant to be obscured glass, its not (par for the course really now isn’t it).
And in a moment of incredibility I discovered that something I asked for to be adjusted on the plan on the 15th of November LAST YEAR has not been done. It managed to slip past me for this long because I foolishly took the word of the person that it was all ok and would be done as I asked. The issue is with the telephone point, initially we had 2 phone lines and a TV point in the house, but then we went with a smartwiring option which removed the need for the builder to supply phone and TV points so I asked for 1 phone line to be removed, the TV line to be removed and the remaining phone line to be moved to the garage (where the smartwiring hub was going). Now silly me figured that since the TV point was removed as asked, as was the second phone point, that the remaining phone point would be in the correct position, instead they have gone and installed it where it was on the original plan.

However I’m not mad at all, in fact I sympathize with them, it really must be hard for the poor little over worked darlings to co-ordinate a house construction when there are so many people involved… To date I have had 7 people involved in the house construction (from designing the floor plan to brick supervisor), 7!! How inefficient can you get? These guys need to attend some seriously hard core Six Sigma training and get their processes fixed, quick time.

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.