Looking after builders

hollydays wrote: »

The thing I've learned is to check on their work to make sure they are for example putting a ) exactly where you want it as once they've done it you can't say " can you move it two feet to the right.

I find tea / coffee making an excellent time to do that - make it, take it to them, a quick 'how's it all going' and a cursory look plus follow up questions / comments as appropriate. Though I had one carpenter in who was fabulous, great with ideas / solutions, great at asking me when there were options and an eye for detail. He got home made brownies with his tea

In the summer I bought some ice lollies for builders which were gratefully received as well as the ice from the ice maker.

Echo the part about giving them glasses / mugs that don't matter. We lost a glass and a few tended to get scratched with cement and general building materials. Good job I didn't break out the waterford crystal :rotfl:

KateLiana27 wrote: »

I underestimated the amount of dust that would be everywhere. And the noise!! Ah well. At least it's getting done and they seem to be working hard.

You may well be underestimating your energy bill too.

I make sure that any tradesmen are well fed and watered but they tend to be here for a few hours only. If it was for a long building project I would probably want them to fend for themselves mostly. A friend who was running a 8am-4pm tea service had a nasty shock when her electricity bill came through! She was later told by someone else that its normal for buidlers to bring their own flasks of tea / hot water.

KateLiana27 wrote: »

I think plugging in their power tools which are on the go half the day will do that more than the tea :eek: They are only here for two weeks though. Allegedly.

They didn't get the coffee and pecan cake today as their loo habits leave something to be desired. I've had to - ahem - use the toilet brush three times in two days, and there was a small puddle of urine on the floor that I stepped in in my socks :mad: Honestly it made me cross - do they do that in their own homes? How hard is it for grown men to take a couple of seconds to check the loo (and floor!) after they've been? Is this normal behaviour? My 5-year-old hasn't missed the loo in months!!

The plumbers turned up and did a good job with the first fix, but one of the two "main" builders didn't turn up (off sick apparently - OK it happens to us all, but no-one let me know so I was left waiting in for hours) and the other knocked off at 2pm. Sigh. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

I liked it much better when we weren't living in the house and blissfully oblivious to all this nonsense.

The answer to whether they'd wee on the floor etc in their own home is a resounding "yes". Clearly someone else is there to clean the toilet. Most of us are better behaved out of the house than in it. It wouldn't hurt to leave a note in there asking them to leave it as they found it! They're thick skinned.

Try not to presume that they're knocking off at 2pm. Sometimes things need to be sorted out, planned and purchased. Or it might just be that nothing could be done past that point in the day without it running over by hours.

We once had a formal complaint made to the FMB (which we won, btw) where the client listed as part of the complaint that:
The plasterer was sitting down on the job (he has to wait for things to 'go off')
My husband had left an hour "early" to attend our daughter's 6th birthday party - which he was told about!

I can tell you're not like that, but work when you're self employed isn't limited to the client's house, nor to the hours of 8-4. So yes, it's possible that he knocked off because he fancied it, but there's usually another reason and it may well have been linked to needing his partner who was absent.

When our drive was done the lads worked hard but started every day with a cuppa from my wife,this became tea and biscuits and one day she made them bacon sandwiches and asked them if they wanted a fried egg in them,did a great job and on time and price