Comments on: QOTW: Renovations Are A Bust

By: Carina

Carina — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:02:33 +0000

My family is having a house built right now and the most obvious mistake the builders made is putting the doors on backward. They throw their soda, beer and cigarettes everywhere and have turned the backyard into a dump. They put one door in and spent the rest of the day on their lunch break.

By: Kaylee

Kaylee — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:49:01 +0000

My family doesn’t have bad experiences with that because my dad hires his friends (or someone recommended by his friends). They’re always nice and almost on time!

By: Aisling

Aisling — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:58:07 +0000

Well, I worked at the Home Depot, and have had a few run-ins with some angry DIYers. I was a cashier, and someone made the mistake of putting plumbing and electrical right next to it. So, every morning, I would have someone come up and ask me a plumbing or electrical question, and then get pissed off when I couldn’t answer it. As me a question about plants, appliances, lighting or lumber (also surrounding departments) and I’m sure I can make up something pretty close to the truth, but it took me a month to remember that the black piping for plumbing was called PVC.

By: Kimmie

Kimmie — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:02:16 +0000

Fortunately, I don’t have any horrible horror stories about workmen not getting stuff done on time. It was actually awesome they took an extra year to finish my high school since it gave me an extra year with Jay. But, the men are coming round today to put new doors on my house… so… we’ll see after that.

By: Zala

Zala — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:21:09 +0000

Well, when we moved, we had to wait three months for the company to move our telephone number and enable internet at our new flat. Even though they said it will last two weeks the most.

By: Mish

Mish — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:27:44 +0000

We renovated our Wantirna home last year. Mom pushed and bullied the builder to get it done on time - and it was.

By: Juice

Juice — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:42:55 +0000

A few years ago, when our house in the Philippines was being renovated, the engineer gave us a time frame of 3-4 months to complete the whole thing. He took almost half a year and it pissed the hell out of my mom because she already had the date set up for the whole housewarming party the date, the caterers etc etc and she had to postpone everything.

There were lots of problems involving the materials and the people and whatnot. It was pretty irritating, so you’re not alone.

By: Vera

Vera — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:27:54 +0000

In preparation of my future (well now current) job as a web designer/developer my dad has always told me to be prepared to fulfill a client’s every request.

As such I expected others who were payed by us to do that. Of course, not only did they have a tendency to ignore most of our requests but hey talked back to us a LOT, often quite insultingly.

As for deadlines… WHAT deadlines? I remember the summer last year when we renovated our kitchen and entry hallway (they are one since my parents demolished the all when they bough the apartment). The man took a look around and said “one week AT MOST costing 400RON). In the end it cost us double and it was finished in 3 weeks.

Not to mention that he kept being extremely condescending to me, believing I was 16 or so… I believe I also have a blog entry about that.

The next renovations we made in a single room apartment left to us by my gran, wanting to rent it. This time the guy didn’t charge us more than he initially said, but he kept talking too much when mom went to see how he was doing. He also had the audacity to tell my mom that she was talking too much and keeping him from work. Yet he was the only one doing the talking.

So yeah… I pretty much do my best to avoid renovations, even though they are needed.

By: Bobbi-lee

Bobbi-lee — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:12:47 +0000

Oh god tell me about it. I have had so many problems with construction guys, most I can tell you from the last month alone. One being when we first moved we needed to get a Telstra guy out to connect the line. Telstra said he would arrive between 10am and 2pm. I took the day off work so I could be there and waited. And waited. at 2.15 I ring Telstra asking where he is and they say something along the lines of there being no time frame etc. meanwhile getting bored shitless at home, my sister turns up at 3 and we decided to go down the road to the shops. We end up in the library and spend a while there, when at 5pm he rings my mobile and says he is waiting and it is not good enough that we are not home when he gave us warning. WTF! so I tell him I will be home in 5 minutes. I get home and he isn’t there. He left a note to say he will be 20 minutes he had another important job. Finally he arrives at 6ish and connects the line and stuff and goes to leave, before telling me that the line won’t be connected until the next day and it is advised I stay home to answer his “test” call so I know it is working. I didn’t stay home though, and eventually the line was connected.
At the moment we are having problems with the plumbing-but it isnt the plumbers who are at fault it is the caretaker of the apartments. He wont call a plumber unless we take the day off work and wait around like the Telstra guy-and if we get rid of the cats. Originally it was ok to have cats-but now he has some big dispute with us he wants us to get rid of them. grr so annoying. We would ring a plumber ourselves but neither of us have time to take a day off work, find somewhere for the cats to stay etc all in one day *hoping* that the plumber turns up. For now we just don’t use the kitchen sink ever otherwise it blocks up and smells.
Whoo long comment.

By: Angela

Angela — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:10:13 +0000

I luckilly don’t have the same experience with construction workers. My dad’s a walking wonder, and he took care of construction and all mechanical, electrical and plumbing problems himself, on top of work, play and any other chores/errands he needed to get done.