The Garden Fence - help and support in tough times

Softstuff

7.30 here and the tradies are arriving. Yowza. If I'd have known you were up Camelot, you could have helped supervise.

Hello to our newest fencie Colin :j hopefully, he can read! That is one lucky puppy to have found a hoomin like you Jamanda.

Hugs MrsLW, Docky's certainly still around for us, in heart and mind.

milasavesmoney

I've just spent time trying to catching up. Such a lovely board.

We woke up to a small water leak oozing up in the grout between a couple of our kitchen tiles. Phone calls to the home insurance agent and the plumber got the process of having it fixed started. The tile sits on a concrete slab so it will have to be jack hammered up.
The deductible is $1000. Sheesh!
The ceramic tile is 25 yrs old so I'm thinking it will have to be replaced. The tile is continuous into the dining room, a small part of the living room and a short hallway. I am not looking forward to this as we have company coming for July 4th weekend.
My husband is going Monday to be evaluated for a knee replacement...no idea how soon that would take place. Busy summer ahead.

nursemaggie

Hugsmilasavesmoney this sounds so De ja vue. This happened to us about 5 or 6 years ago. It was all insured so did not cost us in money.

It was the disruption that was the problem. I knew where the leak was but no the insurance company had to have this specialist company who had computerised detection system. It took them six weeks to admit an old fashioned plumber would have done better and he would have had it fixed in a few days.

By the time they admitted their equipment could not find the leak the kitchen units were damaged so were the floorboards in the breakfast room, all were sodden. They found the lead pipes had not been changed so we had to be replumbed. It all started on June 12th and we were disrupted for 6 months

Oh I do hope you don't have all this to come but it does sound so like ours. They finally finished the kitchen and breakfast room floors on 24th December. I must admit it was lovely when it was all done.

Don't worry about your company I am sure they will have much sympathy and all will go well.

I am sure your DH will have his op soon and it will be so good to be pain free. Make sure he does all of his exercises after the op and he will be like a new man.

You certainly have a busy summer ahead of you but we will all be with you all the way. We have some experience of builders, in all their forms, between us.

I've had two new kitchens and four new bathrooms over the years, The second bathroom I did myself even surprised myself to learn I could do plastering.

Everything will work out OK. The best thing will be to have a pain free DH.

grandma247

Nuatha some of those things you found in your inlaws and your homes are so frightening. There are some very stupid/nasty people out there.

We moved into our current house over a May bank holiday so all the people who were to come and provide services were not coming until after that. We had no boiler because the previous owner had taken it out so we got him to drop the price to pay for it as well as the new damp course which was finished a day before we moved in. we had no running water upstairs and there was no gas appliance working except for the cooker.

Hubby having been in the building trade set to and connected the water and added temporary taps to the boiler pipes so he could turn off the water when needed. He heard water running upstairs only to find that none of the sanitary ware was actually connected up ! Everything had to be plumbed in which he did.

Then he found the reason for no gas to the fires was a pipe on the kitchen floor that was not connected so he did that then went upstairs for something only to smell gas. He turned off the gas then went up and took up part of the floor in two rooms to find the gas pipes had not been capped but bent over instead! Good thing none of us smoke.

There had been some of those gas wall heaters in the bedrooms which were removed but the outside bits were still on the walls so that gave hubby a clue where to look for the problem.

Over time we have found other things. We are in the process of doing the kitchen and I insisted on having a proper electrician to install the electric oven which required it's own socket. I am so glad I did because he found some illegal bodge job in the wall behind the plaster as well as a wire that was barely in on another socket which had always crackled.

In the end the job was cheaper than the estimate because we didn't need a dedicated cooker point due to the oven not needing it according to the fitting instructions so it was just a normal socket.

ivyleaf

jamanda that poor, poor little pup I'm so glad you were able to rescue him.

Docky thank you for your lovely message :A

mila I do hope the leak gets fixed with the minimum of disruption. Just realised you haven't posted on this thread before and I'm used to seeing you on the Prep thread! How very nice to have you on this thread as well :j

nursemaggie That must have been horrendous :eek:

Softstuff

Gosh Mila, hope you get that sorted in a timely tidy fashion

candygirl

Well done JAMANDA on saving baby Colin.It is mad having two pups isn't it? My two were three months apart, n were like mini whirlwinds when puppies, but now they're both 13, and like an old married couple. It's so lovely to see them together:D

Hard_Up_Hester

When we bought the house we live in now it was a bit of a wreck, when the previous owner found out that we were doing it up, he came round to demand more money for it. When we refused he contacted his solicitor and then ours!

Softstuff

Hard_Up_Hester wrote: »

When we bought the house we live in now it was a bit of a wreck, when the previous owner found out that we were doing it up, he came round to demand more money for it. When we refused he contacted his solicitor and then ours!

Ok, that is one of the most bizarre things I've read :rotfl:

Went to ikea again today. Monnagran, you'd be proud, only got what we went for.
The surprise was that we fit this:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20293667/
And this:
http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/20298740/
Along with 3 large photo frames for a friend and the 2 of us in the back of a fiat 500. Thus saving $165. And proving that I could have been a magicians assistant after all

moneyistooshorttomention

Hard_Up_Hester wrote: »

When we bought the house we live in now it was a bit of a wreck, when the previous owner found out that we were doing it up, he came round to demand more money for it. When we refused he contacted his solicitor and then ours!

Mygawd - the phrases "nerve of the devil" and "takes the biscuit" come to mind for that little try-on.

Did he seriously think you would continue live in it "as is/was"?:rotfl:. None of his business if you upgraded it afterwards and anyway we all expect that the next owner will do work on a place we've just sold (even if its just because their taste is different to ours). Cue for those people who rip out new kitchens from a house they've just bought...

There was me assuming that the worst a vendor could do would be one would find out "after the event" how many lies/or "lies by omission" they had told you. Cue for quick count of how many lies my vendor told me:
1 direct lie
7 lies by omission
1 thing he probably wasnt aware of (but would have lied about I'm sure - if he had been)
1 thing that would count as "unexpected/bad" to someone from a different part of the country (ie myself:cool:) though its not abnormal here (ie dogs left barking outdoors).

Perhaps we ought to have a "competition" about whose vendor was the worst:cool::rotfl: