21) Building a House
We had been warned by someone never to build a house, rather buy a ready built one as it was just too traumatic but we could not see what the problems could be. You pay your deposit; choose your plans, and just watch as your home grows, what could be simpler? What indeed?
It all started off well enough, once we had sorted out the problem of the next door neighbour encroaching into our plot and the brickwork went up ever so quickly and soon the roof was on. We thought it was going extremely well and that it would not take the full four months to complete it. We were very happy.
We went there one weekend to see how it was coming along and found that the plumber had put one of the down pipes in the wrong place. Instead of being tucked discreetly away in a corner it was slap bang in the middle of a decorative brick pillar. He had also not put the other down pipes under the holes in the gutter but had just stuck them to the corner of the gutters without any holes so there was no way that the water from the roof would have gone into the down pipes. We could not believe it, so on Monday morning we rang the office and told them what we had discovered, they were very apologetic and agreed to see that it was fixed.
Another time we went there and found that the carpenter who had put the cupboards into the kitchen had made a mistake so that the section of the cupboards in the corner was blocked off with panelling and there was no way of getting to it to put anything into it. It was not a big kitchen and we needed every little bit of space we had so we rang the office one again.
They put up curtain rails in the lounge, the ones over the French doors were in three sections so it meant that one would either have to have two curtains that did not meet in the middle and one empty curtain rail or you could have three curtains one on each rail but then the middle one could not be drawn to either side and when the French doors were open the curtain would hang down in front of the opening.
The plumber installed the shower and he fixed the head directly into the wall, no pipe of any kind, just a showerhead sticking out of the wall. It could not be adjusted in any way and would have just sprayed water onto the facing wall at about 6 foot up. As I am less than 5 foot I would not have got wet at all. We pointed it out and asked for it to be done properly, he was very angry and broke the plaster on the wall as he tore it out.
We were asked to give the carpenter the measurements of our fridge and stove so that he could leave spaces in the kitchen that would accommodate them but of course he completely disregarded them and he had to pull out the cupboards and redo them.
They hung the wrong door at the front entrance. We had particularly asked for a special door there and they had forgotten all about our instructions. I can’t remember all the problems we had but it was a nightmare. Every morning I would get up early and get the boys into the car, we would drive into the industrial site where Jonny was working to drop him off at work. I would then go home, give the children their breakfast, get my chores done and go right across town to see how things were at the house that day. Then in the evening I would have to get Jonathan and Dominic ready for bed make the supper, go back to the industrial site to pick up Jonny as he was working a lot of overtime and did not finish until pretty late. Each day I would say, “I was at the house yesterday, I really don’t think I need to go there again” and Jonny would say, “What happened last time you didn’t go” Yes, it really seemed that if I missed a day something would be done badly or a mistake would be made. There were problems with the fence; there were problems with the water and sewage connection. I don’t remember what it was all about but I know I spent days, going from one council office to another to get it right. Someone said that it was the builder’s problem and I should not have bothered but I knew that if I did not do it no one else would and the house would never be ready for us to move in.
Then one morning when I arrived on site I saw all the parquet blocks, which had just been laid, in a big pile at the front of the house and the house was wet right through. There had been a flood in the night, the pipe connecting the cistern had broken off and the water had just filled up the house. When the foreman had opened up to start work the water gushed out floating the parquet blocks with it. Then all work had to stop. They could not relay the floor until the screed was dry again and that took over two weeks. Once the floor was relayed it of course had to be sanded and the guys who did the sanding made huge brown marks on the newly painted walls so they all had to be repainted.
With all the problems we were still excited and looking forward to our house being finished. It was not a big house, just three bedrooms, a lounge cum dining room one bathroom, and the kitchen but it was on about a third of an acre of land at the end of a cul-de-sac, on slightly higher ground than the rest of the houses in the street. All the houses were built facing onto a vacant bit of ‘greenway’ so we did not feel too close to one another. Our address was No.10 of 66th Avenue and of course we thought of calling it Hastings or something similar. I had wanted to call it ‘And all that’ (I think there was once a book called “10-66 and all that”) but we never did anything about it and eventually the people we sold it to called it Battlefields.
Yes building it was a bit of a battle but eventually in October 1969, thirteen months after we had paid our deposit, it was completed and we could move in.
It all started off well enough, once we had sorted out the problem of the next door neighbour encroaching into our plot and the brickwork went up ever so quickly and soon the roof was on. We thought it was going extremely well and that it would not take the full four months to complete it. We were very happy.
We went there one weekend to see how it was coming along and found that the plumber had put one of the down pipes in the wrong place. Instead of being tucked discreetly away in a corner it was slap bang in the middle of a decorative brick pillar. He had also not put the other down pipes under the holes in the gutter but had just stuck them to the corner of the gutters without any holes so there was no way that the water from the roof would have gone into the down pipes. We could not believe it, so on Monday morning we rang the office and told them what we had discovered, they were very apologetic and agreed to see that it was fixed.
Another time we went there and found that the carpenter who had put the cupboards into the kitchen had made a mistake so that the section of the cupboards in the corner was blocked off with panelling and there was no way of getting to it to put anything into it. It was not a big kitchen and we needed every little bit of space we had so we rang the office one again.
They put up curtain rails in the lounge, the ones over the French doors were in three sections so it meant that one would either have to have two curtains that did not meet in the middle and one empty curtain rail or you could have three curtains one on each rail but then the middle one could not be drawn to either side and when the French doors were open the curtain would hang down in front of the opening.
The plumber installed the shower and he fixed the head directly into the wall, no pipe of any kind, just a showerhead sticking out of the wall. It could not be adjusted in any way and would have just sprayed water onto the facing wall at about 6 foot up. As I am less than 5 foot I would not have got wet at all. We pointed it out and asked for it to be done properly, he was very angry and broke the plaster on the wall as he tore it out.
We were asked to give the carpenter the measurements of our fridge and stove so that he could leave spaces in the kitchen that would accommodate them but of course he completely disregarded them and he had to pull out the cupboards and redo them.
They hung the wrong door at the front entrance. We had particularly asked for a special door there and they had forgotten all about our instructions. I can’t remember all the problems we had but it was a nightmare. Every morning I would get up early and get the boys into the car, we would drive into the industrial site where Jonny was working to drop him off at work. I would then go home, give the children their breakfast, get my chores done and go right across town to see how things were at the house that day. Then in the evening I would have to get Jonathan and Dominic ready for bed make the supper, go back to the industrial site to pick up Jonny as he was working a lot of overtime and did not finish until pretty late. Each day I would say, “I was at the house yesterday, I really don’t think I need to go there again” and Jonny would say, “What happened last time you didn’t go” Yes, it really seemed that if I missed a day something would be done badly or a mistake would be made. There were problems with the fence; there were problems with the water and sewage connection. I don’t remember what it was all about but I know I spent days, going from one council office to another to get it right. Someone said that it was the builder’s problem and I should not have bothered but I knew that if I did not do it no one else would and the house would never be ready for us to move in.
Then one morning when I arrived on site I saw all the parquet blocks, which had just been laid, in a big pile at the front of the house and the house was wet right through. There had been a flood in the night, the pipe connecting the cistern had broken off and the water had just filled up the house. When the foreman had opened up to start work the water gushed out floating the parquet blocks with it. Then all work had to stop. They could not relay the floor until the screed was dry again and that took over two weeks. Once the floor was relayed it of course had to be sanded and the guys who did the sanding made huge brown marks on the newly painted walls so they all had to be repainted.
With all the problems we were still excited and looking forward to our house being finished. It was not a big house, just three bedrooms, a lounge cum dining room one bathroom, and the kitchen but it was on about a third of an acre of land at the end of a cul-de-sac, on slightly higher ground than the rest of the houses in the street. All the houses were built facing onto a vacant bit of ‘greenway’ so we did not feel too close to one another. Our address was No.10 of 66th Avenue and of course we thought of calling it Hastings or something similar. I had wanted to call it ‘And all that’ (I think there was once a book called “10-66 and all that”) but we never did anything about it and eventually the people we sold it to called it Battlefields.
Yes building it was a bit of a battle but eventually in October 1969, thirteen months after we had paid our deposit, it was completed and we could move in.
posted by JC at
11:24 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home