Building and Builders Blog (part 2)

Posted on September 29, 2015 by nager

Previously in Cuil Bay’s Blog…… she is let down by Builder2 and has to find someone to do the cladding for the house as it stands in a month-long torrential rainstorm surrounded by expensive scaffolding on hire. Unfortunately she finds that there is a glut of building work in the area and not enough builders to go around.

I set about calling local builders. A few came out on site, saw that the job was needed there and then and turned me down straight away as they were too busy. Some didn’t get back to me. I even asked the builder that a friend, with parents living across the loch, had specifically advised “don’t touch him with a barge-pole”. I ventured further afield and called a whole pile of numbers of builders from Fort William to Oban, starting by asking whether they would be able to start within a month.

Eventually I found Stephen. “Yes I think I’ve got enough people to be able to fit this in” he said. He came back out on site the day that I’d asked Matt the architect to come up to look at the timber frame. By this point it had the slate roof on and the replacement metal shoe in place but it had become evident to me that faith and hope is simply not enough when building a house (or it isn’t if you don’t have Stuart building it…)

Matt liked Steven, which was a good sign. Matt and Stephen bonded over some larch cladding chat, and we sorted out what we were going to do about the windows. Stephen has a solution to everything, which is certainly handy when there are plenty of problems to sort out.

Stephen had already spotted on his first visit that the windows were set in the wrong position within the frames and I’d spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying about other as yet undiscovered problems with the most expensive part of the house build. The windows were set in the position they would normally be for a house that was to be clad in blockwork and render rather than cladding.

It’s difficult to reflect on the house build in this blog without sounding, even to myself, like a hopelessly trusting naïf. Sometimes, in the cold light cast back by retrospection, my decision-making seems verging on the self-sabotaging. Rather like pedaling a bike that is already freewheeling downhill, that undimmable optimism telling me things will be better in the future seems to reinforce a sort of reckless nihilism. I kept telling myself that it will all work out in the end, and, anyway, if it goes to hell in a hand-cart, there’s bound to be a jolly good story in it.

So all this decision-making led me to where I was: It hadn’t occurred to me to double check that Scotframe was designing the same house that the architects had sent to them. It seemed to me that, since every plan and diagram they had received from us showed that the house was to be clad in a combination of wood and render boards, they would design the house as such.

We received three huge boxes of mystery metal thingies with the Scotframe kit. It didn’t occur to me to ask what they were until it was obvious that they were redundant to the build. Thanks to twitter they were quickly identified as masonary ties, for attaching a masonry wall to the timber frame. We also had received around twice as many caberboard floor boards than we needed (which me and the family shifted with great difficulty up a ladder to the upper floor so the screed floor could go in). In retrospect it was clear that the kit was issued with standard gubbins (masonary ties etc) despite all the information they had from the architects. It was also clear that they had issued instructions to their contractors doing the kit erection, to install windows to ‘standard’ spec. So they hammered them in with a nailgun in a few minutes flat (see timelapse – blink and you’ll miss it) in the wrong position. And left a hell-of-a headache for Stephen’s guys coming in afterwards who needed to get them out and move them.

It took a couple of weeks, but eventually all the windows were in the correct position in the frames. There was some headache with the scheduling of the windowsills and I ended up going to Cumbernauld to collect them from Scotframe on the way up to the house, but all the various Scotframe scheduling headaches have merged into one long shimmering, nauseating, debilitating migraine, and I forget the details. I certainly feel a sense of physical pain when I recall the countless phonecalls I have had with Scotframe’s scheduling guy. The most agonsing was calling him 10 days ahead of the due date for the kit delivery and erection to be told it wasn’t going to happen.(link)

Before

After

In the end we were left with one fewer windowsill than we needed. Scotframe said that they had made a mistake and omitted a 2 metre windowsill. Stephen had installed all the windowsills and was left without a 1 metre sill. So Scotframe sent us one of each, just to be sure.

Then the cladding started. The architect seemed to have specified a cladding system for the render that none of the builders I had been in contact with had heard of. It didn’t help to get the house built that’s for sure. The usual cladding system that the local builders seem to use is called K-Rend, Stephen had used Weber on another house and recommended it, so we went for that.

Next episode – link

Builders and Building Blog (part 1)

Posted on September 26, 2015 by nager

There were some issues with the timber kit erection. Some I knew about, including the missing beam shoe and a myriad other things; and some I didn’t.

There will, inevitably, be an asymmetry of information about the house build between myself and the builder, especially when you know as little about building a house as I do. I was worried about things I didn’t know about that could have gone wrong. It was pouring with rain, every day the rain was more torrential, everyday more drips were appearing in corners and every day I seemed no closer to finding someone to do the cladding for the house.

Unfortunately, as well as leaving me with all sorts of issues to clear up, Builder2 also let me down on the cladding. This was something they had said they would do for me straight after the build but, when it came to it, they said that they had too much time pressure from other timber frame erections they needed to do. Since I had naively assumed that they were dong the cladding, I didn’t line up any alternatives and was left with a half-built house in the mid-march torrential rain, scaffolding sitting there doing nothing, and no realistic prospect of getting it sorted in the near future.

All the various difficulties I have encountered can be traced back to a decision. The first misguided decision was to build a house in the first place. But deciding to go on and get the house built (see blog) when the architects had received no tenders was inevitably going to bring glory or annihilation, and most probably the latter.

It was all going swimmingly to start with; one of the builders who we had sent the tender to, and who came highly recommended, was getting stuck into building the house next door. He had the diggers on site, portacabins, a loo. I called him to ask whether he would consider doing the foundations drainage and stuff while he was on site and he agreed to do that. He couldn’t do the rest of the build, but he could arrange the slater, underfloor heating, plumber and electrician. Oh goodie, we could start. And so Stuart became Builder1.

The foundations appeared; effortlessly, beautifully, perfectly, and everything went to plan. The architect fretted a bit that the foundations might not be the right size so I bought a huge tape measure and we went to measure them. Each wall of the house was accurate to within 1-3 mm – in fact it was probably my measuring that was inaccurate. Nothing was a stress for Stuart. He navigated my questions and requests and general ignorance of building with the calm of the Dalai Lama. I decided that faith, hope and love are really all you need to build a house.

So when I found out I had been let down by Builder 2 I went to plead with Stuart. Up until that point, Stuart had mainly managed to get by in discussion with me with a reassuring ‘Aye yes, that will be fine’ and a pensive ‘’Aha, yes’, (except when advising on how we should build the foundations). But unfortunately I didn’t get the hoped for ‘Aha yes, that will be fine’ this time. Stuart couldn’t help with the cladding, he was building two houses close by. The rain was particularly torrential the day I asked him and Stuart was building strip foundations on a site with a depth and consistency of mud that hasn’t been seen since the Somme. The trenches were filled with water, and I wondered whether those scuba divers that work on oil rigs could be persuaded to build West Highland foundations when they are off-shift.

I had to look elsewhere for the cladding.

Next episode

Time-lapse of the cladding

Posted on September 22, 2015 by nager

I had the time-lapse camera all set up and then forgot to turn it on so i missed the weber cladding going on. I managed to catch a bit of the wood going up though….

Russwood larch cladding and Weber render system on board by SEC joiners and Builders, Oban.

We have that phone line at Last – but what about everyone else?

Posted on September 21, 2015 by nager

Today we actually got our phone and Internet line installed.

I had a call at 810am from a nicely-spoken engineer. After a lot of waiting and disappointments, they were on the way. Would there be someone on site? Asked the engineer.
So I had the customary panic, called the builder and yes, someone would be there.
The engineer called back at 9am. There wasn’t anyone on site and he didn’t realise the pole was on the farmer’s land. He needed permission.
Action stations: call the farmer who owns the field with the pole in, yes it’s fine, call the builder, yes they are on their way.

I couldn’t call back the engineer as the whole area is a mobile reception black hole (hence the need for a phone-line…) so a text and crossed fingers had to suffice.
Later this afternoon I called back the builder to find out how they got on. The porch is up, the wall at the back is up and the perch for the way pump is on the way. And, best of all, the BT line is fully installed.

photo by Stephen Campbell

So am I happy? Well I am certainly feeling rather more jolly than earlier today while contemplating the stresses of getting the interior finished. I felt elated as I dumped sacks of rubbish from the site in the dump (official moratorium on rubbish on site to all builders from now on…on pain of death), zoomed to the hateful Hillington Industrial Estate to look for tiles, taking a little time out to strutt my John Travolta stuff on these sparkly disco tiles.

However I’m feeling a bit of, what can only be described as survivor guilt, too. When I chatted with the engineer this morning I checked that he was also putting in the line for my neighbour. I know they are also awaiting Openreach action and have been for a long time. The engineer didn’t have it on his list for the day (which seemed rather an enormous omission). I asked if he could find out about it but they can only do jobs allocated on the day. It seems like a huge problem of efficiency, customer service and everything else on the part of Openreach.
So I have a line now. But it seems that my neighbours and the many people who have tweeted me following my blog posts on openreach do not. There is a population of people out there who just aren’t getting any kind of service from Openreach. BT Openreach may have responded to my mini campaign for installing my own line, but a response to the wider issue of thousands of people waiting with no phone or internet obviously needs to be addressed.
You can get a view of the size of the problem from the submission of Sky, in June, to the Government consultation on whether Openreach should be split from BT. Here are their main findings:

Approximately 90% of new line installations, which require an Openreach engineer to attend, take 10 calendar days or longer. Almost one in ten installations takes longer than 30 days.
Openreach changes the agreed installation date for Sky customers on average around 12,500 times a month.
Openreach misses over 500 appointments each month to install new lines for Sky customers and fails to complete a further 4,000 jobs per month.
Fault rates across Openreach’s network increased by 50% between 2009 and 2012, the last year for which reliable data is publicly available.
Openreach’s performance in fixing faults is consistently below the targets set out in agreements with service providers.

Stood up again

Posted on September 21, 2015 by nager

See update at end…..we have a line!

I’ve been stood up again. This will not comes as a surprise to anyone who has had dealings with Openreach and stayed in hoping and waiting to get a line installed only to get a no show.

Since ‘The Letter’ I have had an almost daily phone call from my personal customer services representative from the Chairman’s office at BT Openreach. They are really keen to help and earnest and call back when they say they will. At one point I was getting a call every day to update me on the status of my line installation – each one telling me they were awaiting information and promising to call the next day.

In a parallel and non-overlapping storyline, I also had made contact with the local engineer for new line installation. This occurred through the neighbour making a phone call about their line, and the Galasheilds-based engineer getting in touch direct with me. From him I discovered we were waiting for poles to be moved or upgraded and that there was capacity for one more phone in the area, but not two.

Last week the update from my personal customer services representative was that they were waiting on some work to a pole near to my house and then they would install the line.
Then it all happened very quickly. Yesterday Robert from the chairmans office called, the engineers would be installing the line between 11 and 1 the following day. It was a race to get hold of the builder to make sure someone was on site – I was working away on the Isle of Cumbrae, so it couldn’t be me. Yes the builders would be there, phew.

My personal customer service helper called me at lunchtime to check all was well and the line was in. I called the builder and no, the line wasn’t in. No-one came, but the builders came across an Openreach van on the road as they headed off at the end of the day, but the guys in it had not heard about my job.

Oh well, we’ll wait till another day.

Update: WE HAVE A LINE!

Welcome to my Building the House Blog

Featured

Posted on September 21, 2015 by nager

The trials and tribulations of building our house in Cuil Bay. I hope you enjoy it. There have been ups and downs, but I like a good yarn, and this is certainly good for collecting those…

(Not) Building the shed

Posted on September 21, 2015 by nager

There’s loads and loads of excess materials hanging about on site and, having observed the process of building a house, I thought it could be a useful exercise to attempt to emulate it in miniature in building a shed using left over materials. Following a quick tutorial from Builder1’s son, straight out of joinery school, (which I didn’t understand any of at the time he was explaining it), I made a plan.

I’d hoped this timelapse would show a shed emerging out of the dirt, but unfortunately it shows quite a bit of looking for a lost 10mm hammer drill-bit which we lost in the first five minutes, quite a bit of tea-drinking and, among it all, me buzzing about clearing that huge pile of rubbish almost blocking the camera.

Fortunately dad came to the rescue on day 2 with another drill, but the raising of the shed will have to wait for another day. At least the rubbish got cleared

Joy and Cladding

Posted on September 15, 2015 by nager

It was while I was running a team planning and review day on the Isle of Cumbrae that the scaffolding, at last, came down.

My thoughts fell to calculating how massive the bill for the scaffolding will be, but I perked up when I received these photos from the builder who has been working on the outside of the building.
It really does look lovely. (Russwood larch and Weber render system in case you are interested, and all so expertly stuck on by SEC Joiners and Builders)

Photos by Stephen Campbell

and meanwhile….Important note: It was mainly spreadsheets and powerpoint inside, with a wee bit of flip-charts on the beach

Holiday Horrors

Posted on September 9, 2015 by nager

Look. Here’s how it is.

It’s builder holiday season at the moment. Both Builder#3 and Builder#4 have jetted off to the other side of the Atlantic for weeks (not together I assure you) and things are not too good.

Before Builder#3 left he completed everything on the list encompassing (broadly) the outside of the house: the wood cladding, the building the porch and the base for the heat pump as well as the and fire boarding. Everything was hunky dory. Happy me.

Builder#4, on the other hand, was supposed to have finished the plaster-boarding and taping and even the painting before he went on a week holiday in mid September. He always had a schedule he would cite at me when I grew anxious that he wasn’t making progress. He sounded convincing even though forward motion seemed to be painfully slow. It certainly didn’t help that he didn’t seem to be up at the build much – mainly 2 and a half day weeks towards the end, and the occasional 3 and a half day week. He took to coming to the build on a Tuesday during a critical period in September, when Mondays are the only days I can get up to the house. After two weeks like this I switched my working week around to coincide with him on site. I didn’t get much communication about how things were going. I got thumbs up emojis when I asked for information.

He came back from his week of holiday with only two weeks before another holiday, this time of two weeks. Yes he would get things done. I stressed the urgency: I had a week booked off work, which I need to do months in advance otherwise my diary fills up with back-to-back meetings that can’t be moved. We’d planned to be away on holiday as a family that week but I decided to stay to get things done and spend the week up at the house while the family frolic in mountain meadows in Switzerland eating fondue and drinking süsse, a sweet and slightly fizzy, lightly fermented grape juice. I had arranged for lots of things to happen that week; flooring and bathrooms and lighting and kitchen and etc etc. it would distract me from the fondue and the süsse, and besides, the house needs to get done.

I unfortunately couldn’t make it to the build on the Monday in the middle of those vital two weeks to check progress. I sent anxious texts and I called, never getting through.

He was going to be done by the Friday and would go on holiday on the Tuesday the following week, however as the time approached he said he’d be up on the Monday to finish things. That didn’t sound good. My final text on the Thursday saying ‘Is all on track to completion by Monday? am getting a little anxious about it.’ Was replied with a ‘All is good’

When I arrived at the build on the Monday I was shocked with how little progress had been made. And when I mean shocked, I mean pretty much bowled over, knocked for six, whacked in the face by a cricket-ball. We were miles and miles off being ready. And time had run out. I walked around the house, and then I walked down to the sea. Sitting on the shingle as the sparkling waves drew my eye out into the bay, I watched the strings of gulls spanning the grey-blue water to Balnagowan like white bunting. I thought about all the many things I have to be grateful for, I thought of other things; anything else. But there were things to sort out and so soon I was crash-landing back into the painful reality of the present.

I went back to the house. We had a chat: we went through the outstanding list of work, which was rather long. He had lost people who had agreed to help with the build and was effectively operating as a one-man -band. He agreed it would be hard for him to finish it alone. I would look for someone to take over the work. He started packing up straight after lunch and was gone by 3pm. I immediately called Builder#3, could he help? He possibly may be able to, but as I knew already, he was going on holiday too, and for nearly three weeks.

So this coming week I have various things booked to happen. I will cancel them. Builder#3, despite being on holiday, sent his guys in to look at the extent of the work still to do. But it’s hard to escape the reality that he’s away on holiday and that, if I were on holiday, I would be feeling pleasantly detached from the woes of someone else’s house build.

And my holiday? Well I was feeling a bit miserable about that. No holiday, and having to cancel things at the build. I arranged a bothy adventure with a friend who has a mission of visiting and photographing every bothy in Scotland (see his blog and wonderful photos). And also, so as not to exaggerate the enjoyable qualities of my holiday without the kids, I arranged a massive decluttering of our house facilitated by someone I know who runs a cleaning company. It turns out, that when she’s in her professional capacity, she is a terrifying TV-Style decluttering dominatrix (and hopefully just who I need to sort out my hoarding problems). But it’s going to be painful.

Well that was the plan until we got out the passports for travel and discovered that younger daughter’s passport expired in July. And, although you can get an adult passport in 24 hours, it takes a week to renew a child’s passport.

So perhaps two disasters can work together for good….. I get to spend the holiday with the family.

However, if positivity starts to blossom, I should remember that I still have that decluttering booked. And I still have those wake-in-the-night-in-a-cold-sweat, everything’s on hold, plaster-boarding worries to sort out.