A lot of rubbish and a good day

Posted on November 17, 2015 by nager

Today was a good good day. It wasn’t really because we got the heating working again, or because the plaster boarding is done and the stairs in, or because the electrician gave me the various documents I need for my FITs claim, or that I found out that we actually do have wiring in for the cooker hood, or even that apparently it isn’t a massive issue to actually get some lighting in the huge cavernous stairwell.

It didn’t even start that well with yet another call to the floor fitter to put him back again*, which made me feel a bit bad. Fortunately I was jogging along the cycle path at beautiful Loch Creran at the time and could spend a little time ripping out baby rhododendrons which are recolonising the oak woodland there, which made me feel much better.

What made it a good day was that I spent a very large part of it filling bin bags with rubbish. Never has clearing up vast quantities of builder-detritus felt so good. Irn bru bottles and cans and crisp packets and wrappers. It’s was like checking under the 12 year-old’s desk after she’s shouted “I ALREADY TIDIED MY ROOM MUM!”. And to add to the joy; plaserboard and half dried out buckets of paint and plaster and boxes of stuff that have been sitting about since the beginning of the build.

And why is that all so good? Well, certainly, it was a chance to clear out the last remnants of Builder#4 **, stick it all in bin bags and drive like a bat-out-of-hell to the dump, slipping in moments before they shut the gate and, with utter abandon, lob it all into a giant skip.

But really I think it was the nature of the task. I’ve been spending pretty much every minute of everyday for the last three months organising myself, organising work, answering questions, making decisions, sorting out problems, organising the build, organising children and, when I’m away at the build or with work, organising the husband to organise the children. It’s pretty exhausting really. Life is usually pretty like that for me. I must like it that way, but this is taking it too far. To be honest, I think I have reached the maximum percentage of one’s brain it is possible to devote to this stuff without tipping right over the edge into a void it’s impossible to climb out of.

So to spend the majority of a day simply sweeping and carrying and shifting, with a bit of singing at top volume to some 80s classics blasting out of the decorator’s very paint-spattered radio, was peace and blessed escapism. While the taper and decorator lunched downstairs conversation on The Jeremy Vine show turned to debilitating period pains and endometriosis. I entertained myself with wondering what the painter would make of it when he came back after lunch.

I loaded the pile of rubbish I had taken out of the house into my car with a great sense of satisfaction and started contemplating whether Builder 1 had been serious when he’d jokingly offered me a job. It was after I’d shown him the deeply unimpressive shed panels I’d built following a bit of a tutorial from his son (during which I looked intently vacant). Well perhaps he was joking. But perhaps he wasn’t.

Yes, it could be a good life being a builder’s labourer. Every now and again anyway (and if you can stand your snot being the consistency of chewing gum…)

* The heating has been off and the floors have had to be put back due to something that happened while I was up at the build last week. The joiners were putting up the small wall in the kitchen and drilling through to affix to floor. It seems an underfloor heating pipe wasn’t in quite the place on the plan and they drilled through it. When I came in Chris was chipping away at the screed floor with hammer and chisel to get at the pipe. Chris put his thumb in the pipe and I was reminded of the story of the dutch boy with his finger in the dam that saved the village. I wondered whether Chris would be staying there until the plumber showed up. He didn’t….The plumber came to fix it but couldn’t turn the heating back on again and forgot to let me or the heating company know of the problem, so the floor is still damp.

**combined with more detritus from the Builder3 joiners and the taper

Builder saga again

Posted on October 25, 2015 by nager

I wrote this a few weeks ago but now the build has progressed far enough along the way for me to start looking up and posting a few blogs I wrote before.

Oct 2015

For the past three weeks the house has been forlonly sitting in its half plasterboarded state. Builder#4 went on holiday, (see blog) already 3 weeks over with the plaster boarding with no prospect of being able to complete even on his return. I postponed floor, kitchen, building control visit. There’s a possibility that Builder#3 will be able to pick up the pieces (again), but he’s on holiday too. And for three weeks. It’s been total torture sitting about waiting to find out what is going to happen with everything on hold.

Well sort of.

Having to finish off this house and all the challenges that it has thrown up has coincided with some of the busiest times at work and in the rest of life. So the house anxieties rumble along in the subconscious, giving me a general feeling of disquiet, and rising to the surface from time to time, usually at 5am when I awake in panic and make a list of things to do before dropping back to sleep. But the rest of life crowds in to distract me, in some measure, from the irritations of waiting.

As if to create a looking-glass world where everything is sunshine, joy and beautiful vistas, in contrast to the humdrum toil, interspersed with panic, of house building, this has been a magical autumn of work visits to some of the most beautiful places in Scotland. It’s been a welcome contrast and a distraction to trials at the build with Builder#4 and the plasterboard.

My role in RSPB Scotland is more often than not about emails, slaving at a computer and meetings in airless rooms, but it’s not all like that and I’ve spent more than my fair share of time over the past couple of months at such uplifting places as Loch Lomond, Islay, Perthshire, Dumfries and Galloway, the Isle of Cumbrae and Loch Lomond again. It’s been amazing, uplifting, productive but, because the job doesn’t go on hold when you’re away from the office to run a workshop at Loch Lomond, or a site visit in D&G, getting all the other stuff done has been a little bit stressful.

But to top it all, This week has been the week of doom. This week I have to pull things together and sort out what’s happening with the house. I’ve sent a holding email to Builder#4 while I’ve been waiting until Builder #3 to gets back from holiday so I could decide what to do. However while they have been away the electrician pointed out that I need a completion certificate for the feed-in tariff claim and the FITs are decreasing 87% in January so I had to get a move on. The renewables incentives come to an end in January, so if I don’t have my building warrant completion certificate by then It will be a bit of a financial disaster (it later transpired that the EPC is needed for the completion certificate – see blog). However it did work to put a rocket up the proverbial back-side to try and get things done.

It was clear in that pre-holiday debrief with builder #4 that he would struggle to finish, so it all rests now on whether builder#3 can achieve it.

So, like freshly interviewed candidate waiting on the offer of that dream job, or starry-eyed teenager waiting on a phone call from the crush, I wait for the builder to respond to the unseemly number of texts I’ve sent him. Up until the past few weeks I have managed to keep work stress and build stress entirely separate and compartmentalized. However with the time urgency added this week, it has started to get rather distracting.

However, in the spirit of nothing being lost to potential usefulness, even the bad stuff, it acted as a rather timely illustration in a training course I was delivering to colleagues that day, by coincidence, on stress and resilience.

In the end I resort to emojis – desperate measures- one might say.

And in the end he calls. During the aforementioned training course.

Only half an hour after discussing the impact of external stressors on our resilience to workplace stress, mentioning, by way of an example, how waiting for a builder to call could add to the already slightly stressful activity of leading a training course, I excuse myself, leaving my co-trainer ably in charge for a few moments.

In probably the most anticipated and eagerly awaited phone call in the history of telephony (well perhaps not including that very first “Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you.” phone call from 1876) I discover that Builder#3 can indeed come to the rescue. I’ll find out more when he goes up to the house on Monday.

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.

Portaloo Humour

Posted on August 26, 2015 by nager

I had a little giggle today and I thought I’d share it with you.

.
I have a portaloo. I should have organised it myself but Builder#3 offered to arrange it and it was one less thing on the to do list. I use the portaloo sometimes but generally I wander up to my neighbour the fisherman’s barn and use his outside loo, which he very kindly offered me the use of. It seems to double as his cold store and contains shelves of cans of beer and bottles of cider, however it isn’t the booze that’s the main attraction to me. It’s the flush and the hot and cold running water.

All was going well with the portaloo until Builder#4 came on site to do the plaster-boarding. Now it wasn’t that there were too many people on site – Builder#4 and his two guys may have been staying over in a caravan in site but they arriving Monday afternoons and generally leaving by Wednesday.

.
But he complained a lot about the state of the loo. I kept calling Builder#3 to try and sort it out. I wasn’t clear whether it was being emptied and what the problem was.

.
Well not until today. Today the man came to clear it out and I discovered that the reason the loo was in a state was because it was blocking because Builder#4’s baby wipes are blocking the pipes.

.
Builder#3’s chaps, cladding the house come midge, come shine, come biblical rainstorm, were beside themselves with glee.

‘Just to let you know that if you do use baby wipes please put them in a seperate bin’ I said to them.

.
‘We don’t use baby wipes’ yelled one of them from the scaffolding.

‘We use sandpaper’.

.
Toilet humour, you might say.

A tale of four Builders.

Posted on August 20, 2015 by nager

And now – a few blogs that have been sitting in my drafts for a while. To begin, here’s one from August…

A quick guide to my builders ….

.
Builder #1 did the groundworks: foundations, drainage septic tank and is coming to do the landscaping and final stuff from drive etc. he also arranged the slater plumber electrician and underfloor heating and screed for me.

.
Builder #2 is Scotframe’s contractor for putting up the timber kits

.
Builder #3 has done the cladding and porches, firebox and a few other things

.
Builder #4 was doing plasterboarding and stairs…. (postscript: and now Builder3 is doing plaster boarding and stairs and everything else…)

.
‘It really isn’t how I would recommend building a house’ I said to the other customer in the builder’s office, ‘ in fact I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy’.

.
The other customer had come in to ask Builder 3 for a quote for building a whole house, but his wife was just looking for the kitchen. Builder 3 had looked round at me and asked whether I’d recommend piecing together lots of different builders and trades to build a house. Ho Ho, how we all laughed …. (in that way that you’d better laugh or you just might cry)

.
I was there in Builder 3’s office to discuss a few things. His company is doing the cladding of the house, the only person who could actually do the work in the timescale needed after Builder 2 let me down. And he’s also building the porches. So we had a bit of planning to do for that, but I also needed to discuss the fire boarding around the wood burning stove – which is inset into the wall. His company isn’t doing that piece of work. For reasons I am puzzling over, I gave that job, and the internal plaster boarding stairs etc, to another builder.

.
Builder 3 had already demonstrated a great interest in the stove type and set-up and had put a similar one into his own house, Builder 3 had done a great job of moving all the windows into the place they should have been in the frames (after a mess up by builder 2 – which Builder3 had noticed when he came to visit), Builder 3 had demonstrated his attention to detail in spades, And had gone beyond the call of duty in helping get the electricity supply in – although, come to think of it, that would have been a total disaster had Builder 1 not stepped in (but that’s another story related to me not double checking there was going to be someone site that day and then being in meetings all day unable to take calls…). So why would I switch to yet another builder?

.
Well, as I have mentioned before, builders seem quite busy around the area at the moment. There is so much building going on, it has been hard, in the rather ad hoc and ill-advised way I am building the house, to get people when I need them. And when someone is the only person quoting for a job, they know they are the only person quoting for a job, and you know as little about building as a house as I do, there is always the niggling worry that l would end up spending extra money (and I’m already haemorrhaging money like a bankrobber’s escape vehicle with the doors left open). So I had an idea. A friend’s partner is a builder, he lives in East Scotland, but perhaps he will look at the quote and tell me if it is roughly right.

So Builder 4 looked at the quote. He asked me a few questions, visited the house and said he’d do it and gave me a better quote. He would be living on site with the team, working long days, he said, and would get it done quicker. I was almost swayed. I didn’t ask if he knew what to do about the stove (despite the vast numbers of hours I had spent reading and researching about the right kind of stove and the stupendous complexities there appear to be). But the final thought was that I’d been finding it rather hard to pursued Builder 3 to make the hearth in the way I wanted it.

As previously reported, the ‘hearth-ache’ of trying to calculate where the hearth needs to go to satisfy building standards, limits over coridor widths, and to make an insulating constructional hearth, has been quite trying. On the day the stove was arriving I didn’t quite trust that the slab for the stove, which would mean we would have 125mm concrete under the stove, would be there and so I stopped into B&Q at 7am to buy an emergency back-up concrete paving slab and a few backup backup concrete paving slabs. While I was sitting by the sea (it being the only place with mobile phone coverage) and waiting for the lost stove guys to call (“I’m up a track at a locked gate and I can see some sheep and a mountain, do you know where I am?”), Builder 3 turned up in his van with the concrete slab I had asked for. It fitted perfectly. I decided not to mention all the emergency slabs in the back of my car.

.
So without properly thinking about it, and throwing intuition to the winds, I went with Builder 4, and ditched Builder 3. Although we’d all have to play happy families as Builder 3 would be working on the outside cladding and porches and Builder 4 on the inside. Fortunately that seemed to work OK, except Builder 4 would go home every time he perceived there would be some clash – e.g. moving the scaffolding – or if he was waiting on some work done by someone else (but omit to tell me or them what was needed). And even when there were no mitigating circumstances he would only be up on site for three days in a week (sometimes four).

It also became clear that there was a big question mark over how to sort out the stove. He wanted me to tell him how to do it and given my brain had already practically exploded trying to work out the constructional hearth stuff I wasn’t really in a fit state to work out the firebox stuff. When I said that Builder 4 had explained to me how to do it but I couldn’t quite gather the stoic determination to recall what he had said. He said, why don’t you get Builder 3 to do the work then?

.
Fortunately Builder 3, despite having being dumped for the new builder, was generously willing to help advise on various things, including the stove, which is why I happened to be in his office that morning lamenting my hopelessly naive way to build a house, and getting his advice on how to build the ruddy thing.

With the clarity of hindsight, see blog, it is very apparent that taking up with Builder4 was the worst decision I made during the build. Probably even worse than the decision to build the house in the first place.

.
Eventually I decide to bite the bullet and do something about it. I call builder3. ‘Look this is awkward’ I say, ‘but you know I dumped you for another builder? And it’s not quite working out with him, and I was wondering how you’d feel if I asked you to do some more work.’

.
Fortunately builder3 has a sense of humour.

.
So that’s Builders#3 and #4 covered. So what happened to Builders#1 and #2 then?

Well I would have loved for Builder#1 to do the whole build. Nothing is a problem for Builder#1. Need foundations finished by a certain date in the most torrential rain and horrific conditions? Don’t worry it will be done on time. Need someone on site to meet the man from building control at short notice? No problem, even though he’s not really involved with the build any more. Need someone to bring a telehandler to site to unload the plasterboard delivery? He’s there. Electricity company turn up on site to install a cable (next available date in 6 weeks) and no-one’s on site? Don’t worry, he’ll magically show up and get it sorted.

Until recently, ‘Ah, yes’ and ‘that will be fine’ were pretty much the only things that Builder 1 said to me. Occasionally, he would make suggestions on changing some part of the architects spec. But largely it was left up to me to warble away naively about stuff I know nothing about (namely building a house) in the silences. He’d agreed to doing the foundations, as he was working on the neighbouring plot at the time, but they had too many jobs on to take the build any further. From time to time I’d plead with him to come back to the building site, but to no avail. But despite not being able to take on the big jobs, he has been happy to help along the way, arranging the slating, plumbing and electricity and the underfloor heating and flow-screed.

.
And Builder#2? Well suffice to say he’s not being invited to the house warming party.