A New Build Nightmare – Part 2

 Okay—so, here we are: Part 2. I’ve had a good few people mention to me how much they enjoyed reading about all of my housing woes in part 1 (you sadists!) but here is the kicker: as I stated at the end of part one, you ain’t heard nothing yet! Hard to believe perhaps, but… it gets worse.

So, that one week they predicted it would take to rip out and reinstate all of the ceilings upstairs—try one month! Yeah, we were literally sleeping in the guest bedroom for a month! Turns out the builders underestimated how long it would take them—and, perhaps unsurprisingly given their ridiculously over-optimistic estimates, they didn’t factor in enough time to get the work done either.

So, at this point, I should probably explain the issue with these subcontractors. Unsurprisingly, we aren’t their only clients. Really, that’s a good thing: always beware of the tradesman who is available next week. These guys are busy with other ongoing projects. My understanding is that they specialise in building extensions, and whilst they were carrying out all the works at ours, they had a couple other ongoing jobs. This in principle is all fine, only, they clearly blagged their way to getting the contract for our house by acting like they were more available than they actually were. They effectively squeezed our works into a few days they managed to free up in their calendar, and surprise surprise, when they overran on their time estimates… well, they just didn’t turn up to work here.

That month (maybe even a month and a half, I’m a little fuzzy on remembering the dates now) that it took them to sort out our ceilings; well, that was probably only a fortnight of them actually being on site. Some days they’d turn up, and some days they wouldn’t. Now, yes that is annoying, but the real clincher is, we never actually knew what days they’d turn up! Sometimes, they’d tell us they’d definitely be in on a certain day, and they wouldn’t show. Other times, they’d say they wouldn’t be in until the following week and they’d be knocking at the door at eight a.m.

Now 0800 hours is not terribly unreasonable, but when it’s your day off, eight in the morning is fairly early for you to be washed, dressed, and if you are me, to have either gone for a run or done a workout beforehand. What’s more annoying, is doing all of that, getting ready for eight, for no one to show up. What’s more annoying than that even, is to not get up, and have someone show up when you aren’t even ready. My partner had to answer the door numerous times in her dressing gown when caught off guard. Given that we both work, we had to give the builders a key, so if we didn’t answer the door, they’d just come in anyway.

The next issue that came with these contractors is another subtle one; if you hire a company to extend your home, it is a choice you have made. You know that you are going to be living in a dusty, noisy, messy house with strangers coming in and out all day. Yes, no one really wants that, but if you’ve chosen to have work done for the reward of your fancy new kitchen, or for the benefit of a conservatory or extension, the inconveniences are easier to stomach. Whereas, if the works are things that should have been done when they built the house in the first place… not after you’ve moved in…! Well, I think it is easy to see how these things become slightly less tolerable.

Another issue comes with furniture; obviously, with the ceilings all coming down etc. stuff needed to be moved around. Sure, I understand that—heck, for the sake of knowing that everything is done with care, I don’t even mind moving it myself. But we were still living in the house, so obviously, a lot of stuff we needed to access from time to time (you know: the bed, the dining table, the wardrobe with all of our clothes in, nothing too vital.) Unfortunately, when you don’t know when or if the workmen are turning up, it makes it a lot more difficult to move things in preparation. So, very frequently we’d come home to find that all our stuff had been moved about the house (often to random and obscure hiding places) and none of it had been put back afterwards! Over the course of that month, I must have lost a good few hours due to impromptu scavenger hunts and re-rearranging furniture just so I could you know… live in my own home!

The final issue comes down to the fact that they simply didn’t give a toss that someone had to live in the house they were working on! I got back from work one day to find that they had lifted off the top of my desk in my office… to protect it I guess? giving them room to work, exposing the drawers underneath, which they then failed to cover with a dust sheet. I came home to find all of my drawers (and obviously all of the items inside) covered in building dust! Then there was the plasterer—he really didn’t give a fuck! Everything was covered in plaster when he left: phone chargers, my desk, a chest of drawers, the bed, the carpets!!! We kicked off after that. From then on, they made more of an effort to clean up after themselves, which mostly consisted of leaving their poor sixteen-year-old apprentice cleaning for hours by himself long after everyone else had gone home for the day.

So, ceilings get done… finally. But our issues were like the heads of a hydra: cut off one and two more grow back in its place! Turns out, none of the windows in the entire property (or the entire estate for that matter) were installed properly (remember that mould in the bedroom.) The issue is again one of insulation. Good news is, we are going to get a new window in the bathroom—one that actually opens. Yay! Bad news, every other window (and door, let’s not forget the doors) in the house have to be ripped out and reinstalled. I’m sorry… WHAT!?!?!

So, the whole rigmarole starts again. I can’t even remember how long it took them in the end (there’s a good chance my mind partitioned off those memories in order to protect my sanity as a whole.) I remember their being some mad push to get it all done in the end, but it was the whole ceiling situation again, only worse this time, because instead of it just being the upstairs, it was the whole house at once. We were literally living in a building site without any reprieve. In hindsight, we should have insisted they put us up in a hotel or something, but I feel like that probably would have been even more inconvenient.

One by one, every single window and exterior door was (un)systematically ripped out, (plaster, splinters, and insulation going everywhere.) Then the legally requisite (yet somehow previously overlooked) insulation was installed around the reveals, the windows reinstated, then, once again everything was replastered and repainted—all whilst we were living in the house, or at least trying to, going about our normal work/life routines.

Finally, after several weeks of suffering, a lot of stress headaches, and the return of an eye twitch that had previously only ever plagued me during university exams season and the purchasing process of the house, the job was done. But that still wasn’t the end of it.

Here comes the cherry on top of everything. Somewhere along the line, it became quite clear that there is a leak in our roof. There is a patch of ceiling in the guest bathroom that is damp, right where our property adjoins to next door. To carry out an inspection to determine the source of the leak, they put up scaffolding: some around the side of our house, right on our neighbour’s driveway (they did ask his permission, and he consented, but if he had known… if only he had known back then, I highly doubt he would have done!) and some around the back of our property. The scaffolding on the side of the house, although unsightly, doesn’t really affect us much, just our neighbour, for whom I am sure it’s a pain in the arse, but the scaffolding around the back… well, let’s just say we don’t really have a patio, nor did we for the entire summer, and we cannot open the doors properly to get out the back without having to squeeze through. At the time they installed the scaffolding (without actually giving us any proper warning that they were going to,) I was using those doors to go to work, as my bike was kept in the garden. So, having to squeeze through a gap less than two feet across, and having to duck to avoid smacking your head (which I have done many many times, even just this morning) is a tad irritating.

That scaffolding went up in April. It is now November. To add insult to injury, the leak has not been fixed. Nor do we have a date when it is going to be fixed. Now, initially, they claimed they simply were having a bit of trouble finding the leak. Then, they told us that there was no leak, and that it was a ventilation issue in the roof, and that their solution was MORE INSULATION and some vents. Now, I’m no expert, but I went up into my loft with my dad’s friend, who is a builder by trade, and within five minutes we determined IT MOST DEFINITELY WAS A LEAK. Not only that, but we knew exactly where to find it: behind the soaking wet section of plasterboard nobody thought to inspect—you know… directly above the damp patch in the ceiling!

So, anyway. That’s the story so far. We are sort of stuck in limbo. There is still a good deal of work to be done, with nothing having happened for months now and no end in sight. We are taking legal action as you’d probably expect, but we’re just in the first stages of finding a solicitor at the moment. (If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments.) It’s all been a hell of a frustrating and exhausting affair that kind of makes that whole stressful purchasing process seem like a holiday in the Bahamas.

I think I’m going to go lie down for a bit now.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! I actually wrote this post a good few weeks ago and have been sat on it for a while, but since publishing part one, some shit has gone down, which I kinda have to include, even if it is as a footnote of sorts.

So, throughout all of this shitstorm, there has obviously been a lot of internal politicking going on between the developers, the builders etc. Until this point, I’d decided not to name and shame, but let’s just say, the diabolical building developers in question rhyme with (and are spelt exactly the same as) Sunningdale House Developments (feel free to launch some kind of twitter tirade against them, or report them to Watchdog.) Anyway, long story short, they made the site officer of our estate their scapegoat. Last week we received a text message from him explaining that he had been made redundant. We sort of expected this as he had personally hinted in the past that he feared it was going that way. Whilst he was not completely without fault in how everything was handled, he was a cut above anyone else we dealt with throughout the whole process, and he pretty much did his best to help us from start to finish, even with both his arms tied behind his back by Sunningdale.

Anyway, with the site officer gone, my partner fired off an email to the developers for a status update. The response we got was along the lines of (I’m paraphrasing here): We don’t know anything about any outstanding works you have. The site officer signed off on everything as complete. Your end date for reporting snags has passed, so we’ll be doing fuck all now.

Now, I didn’t take kindly to this, so I took the time to write a very sternly worded letter calling them out on all their BS! I mentioned the simple fact that we have an array of written correspondence that PROVES otherwise, to which the woman we were dealing with WAS HERESELF CC-ED INTO THE EMAILS! Anyway, my greatest weapon in this assault on the gates of Sunningdale, was the carbon copy of the email I sent. I cc-ed the site officer into the email (figuring nothing would come of it given his redundancy) but lo and behold, he fires back a response an hour or so later, calling her out on her bullshit. He says clearly and concisely that he did not in fact sign off on anything, and that his last correspondence on the matter was an attempt to get it resolved again. So… yeah.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sunningdale have gone to ground. I sent that email last Friday and never even received a reply. I’ve just sent a follow up this morning demanding a response, but I have low expectations!

I’m so looking forward to suing these bastards.