First-time house renovation

aliasojo

Joiner I was expecting today is a no show. Not best pleased to say the least. Any chance of sorting me out with some sort of electrified cattle prod, andy? I'd like to be prepared for when I do finally see him. :D

suisidevw

What's the joiner doing alias? used them before or a new tradesman who has let you down?

Stolt, it's looking great!

aliasojo

He's putting in 11 oak doors/frames/architrave/skirting.

He was recommended by another joiner who did work for me but as he is building whole houses now, he just doesn't have the time to do jobs like mine so he passed me onto this bloke.

He's done a few already and I'm very happy with his work, he's very careful BUT he's very slow, which means he doesn't get a lot done each day. So when he misses a day, it knocks us back a lot.

I wouldn't mind as much if he would even text me to let me know he's not coming but I never hear anything. As our place isn't huge and we have kids, a dog and huge amounts of wood, plasterboard and other materials floating about, it's difficult at the moment.

suisidevw

That's not good. You dropped him a line? Can you give him a deadline or use someone else?

latecomer

@aliasojo - sorry to hear things are not up to standard. Seems to be common and probably why the building trade in general gets a bad rep. I dont see why I should pay through the nose for someone to do a job which is sub-standard to what I can do. If it was an insurance job then get onto them and tell them its no acceptable, insurance work generally has seriously inflated prices so there is no excuse.
As for joiner who didn't bother to turn up - leave him a message giving him a deadline before you look for someone else.

~@stolt - love the fish tank - very unusual. Not quite so sure about the lighting the playroom but each to their own

@andy - SDS drill makes light work of doing socket cut outs my biggest problem with them is usually going too deep. Good solution for the socket in the hall and exactly what we did when we needed a socket in the cupboard. how did you earth the back box - was there an earth wire there or did you have to run one to the box?


We had a productive weekend. Painting in the kitchen on friday night - I highly recommend painting all the walls before having the door facings and skirtings installed - expecially if your not going to paint them white afterwards.

On saturday I helped the joiner (boss) start putting up the roof on next door's shed - until the others finally turned up about 2 hours later! They did a good job and made sure it was well sealed which it wasn't previously.

I then got on with painting the kitchen - painted the areas that had been patched following the removal of the old temp kitchen plumbing. MIL had painted round between the units on friday and then got another coat on while I put final coat on the walls. Took ages - or at least it seemed to. Then into the back room and got out the power sander to try and sort out the wall where the sink and cooker were. It had been patched by the plasterer but think it should have been skimmed. Anyway it looks pretty good apart from 2 bits - one small which wont be a problme and one larger one which I'm not so confident about. MIL will be filling them in today and we'll try and sand it tonight.

Then we started on the kitchen flooring. The underlay says it should be laid at 45 degrees to ensure there is no overlap of joins between the underlay and flooring. So we started doing this and laid out all the whole sheets we could. Then tried to figure out a good way to do the rest but realised it was going to take forever and end up with a lot of waste. So we went with putting them across in the more usual fashion. this still took the rest of the evening and some of sunday morning.

Then the actual flooring started. Or should have but I wasn't happy with one section of the floor where the section of ply for the door way into the sitting room met the rest of the floor. Couldn't get that up so took up the piece in the sitting room to see if we could then get it out and still failed as the joiners had built the door frame on it. And as soon as we got the floor in the sitting room up came across all sorts of wiring which I wasn't happy about so had to get the meter out and test them. Finally got everything apart from one removed completed (remaining one is dead but still attached to something - will need to get fully under the floors to trace it) including the old central heating controls. Why dont tradesmen do thigns properly and clear up after themselves??? Would make life so much easier!

And then we finally got back to the flooring. I got the chisels out to level the boards and when I was finally satisfied we got back to the task in hand. We had decided to go from the units to the wall but after much debating we changed our minds and went the other way as that was where all difficult cutting was going to be needed. Took a couple of hours to get the first 2 rows done and in place then progress improved dramatically until we got to the small hall which links to the garage. This was originally intended to be carpetted but in hindsight we thought laminate between the kitchen and garage was probably a good idea - so then had to remove all the skirting boards which to my suprise we managed without splitting any. Also had to cut the bottom of the door standards and one of the end panels in the kitchen which hadn't been cut quite high enough. Had a couple of very tricky cuts round the door way but finally got them done and installed. This only leaves the area between the units which is a rectangle and shouldn't be too bad - which MIL is going to have a go at today.

Stopped at 11:15pm badly in need of a beer and a seat. Fair to say I'm knackered today!

I need to get some network supplies sorted out as the easiest access for wiring is down the hatch in the sitting room so I've got to get it in before the flooring goes down - and thats going to be the next job after the kitchen is finished.

Didn't get anywhere near the PC so no updates to the blog. Have been taking pictures though so it wil happen one day

suisidevw

On another note, I love using our fire and last year didn't have seasoned wood ready to use so in January I started gathering wood for the coming Winter...... yesterday found some guy on gumtree asking to take away some of his trees which have been cut down and I was the first to call. Two car fulls later, you can see what I've got chopped ready and what's read for me to tear apart with my Dads stihl chainsaw next week! I am obsessed by wood!

latecomer

Very smart thinking - we've not got much wood left from last year but have lots of smokeless fuel so are not planning on buying any more until next year. Plus with the imminent arrival we're going to have to make sure the house is properly heated throughout so the central heating will be used more.

suisidevw

Very sensible. We sometimes use it just for atmosphere and to add to the heat from the GCH...... when some people get stoves/fires installed I don't think they actually realise how expensive wood is! I should have a couple of years worth here now so will keep on collecting

spirit

Is the mutt going to give you a [STRIKE]paw[/STRIKE]hand? :rotfl:

aliasojo

suisidevw wrote: »

That's not good. You dropped him a line? Can you give him a deadline or use someone else?

latecomer wrote: »

@aliasojo - sorry to hear things are not up to standard. Seems to be common and probably why the building trade in general gets a bad rep. I dont see why I should pay through the nose for someone to do a job which is sub-standard to what I can do. If it was an insurance job then get onto them and tell them its no acceptable, insurance work generally has seriously inflated prices so there is no excuse.
As for joiner who didn't bother to turn up - leave him a message giving him a deadline before you look for someone else.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place tbh. The Highlands do seem to have a very high majority of 'laid back' tradesmen. The majority use the same old ways (even if there are better ways of doing things) and in their own time.

We struggled for a long time to get a joiner who could produce good work so I think I'll just have to put up and shut up. The alternative is to perhaps end up with another 'that'll do merchant'.

As for the insurance work, I've already started fixing it myself. I shouldn't have to but it's my home and I need this to be over and to feel satisfied with the work. Only way to be certain of that is to do it myself.

I've emailed my thoughts to the company boss who I'm sure will bin the email without a second thought but bad news travels faster than good and I've made it clear I'll be pleased to pass on my review to people requiring the kind of service he provides.

I have no doubt that if I'd been a bloke, he'd have dealt with all this in a different manner. That's another thing the Highlands is bad for.......neanderthal men!

Ironically, I have various family members who are in the trade...my cousin started off as a builder then moved into property developing and is now a millionaire running a substantial business and employing several trades full time, Just a shame he's hundreds of miles away from me.