Super dad vacuums the saw dust

One little aside, which I sadly do not have photos for, is that Super dad was very concerned about the amount of dust and sawdust that was going to be sealed into the new floors. We all have hay fever and dust is a big problem for us. The sawdust was particularly bad in the nursery which the builders had been using as a base to cut timber.

So being the Super dad that he is and putting his family first he insisted we hired an industrial vacuum cleaner over the Easter weekend. He then he spent hours in the roof painstakingly vacuuming the dust and saw dust up. This was an extremely difficult task because we have ThinkPink in the ceiling and it constantly got sucked up and had to be carefully removed in order to keep it intact.

A big thank you to him for our less dusty house.

Photo Diary - Mid April

Finally the engineer came and gave the green light for the structure and now the construction to continue. Here you can see the metal speed bracing which we were waiting for. Now the structure can be closed or sealed.

Electrics are in and what a pain that was - loads of issues, things in wrong places and wired incorrectly.

Now that the engineer has given the green light the floors can go in. Yay.

Our bedroom wall which has given lots of headaches due to incorrect windows, window and door sizes being delivered. Finally the correct door and one window are in. The other window is still on its way because they delivered two right opening windows. How silly who wants the windows on either side of the door to open the same way - surely I am not crazy to think that it makes sense for the two windows to open in opposite directions.

Photo Diary - Begining of April

Door Frames are in. Internal structure is almost complete

Plumbing has been put in and is ready to be sealed into the walls.

Windows are in. All except for our bedroom wall where they delivered the wrong windows and door.

These are the taps for the bath - very exciting.

The strain of building

We've spent many painful weeks since my last post fighting the builders to get things moving more quickly. When we started the renovation we were told 10 - 12 wks which took us to the 2nd last week in April, plenty of time to finish before our little girl arrived. However some time around the beginning of April we were told that the new estimated date of finishing would be 25 May. When we picked ourselves up off the ground from the shock we started fighting. Super dad took their schedule and made them shave 4weeks of the deadline.

Things have been very stressful since then with Super dad basically becoming the project manager, foreman and overall 'bad cop' in order to get things done. We are constantly fighting about how slow they are going, what they have not communicated with us, what they have not asked for our input on and off course what they have done wrong and need to change, adjust or redo.

To make matters worse we still do not have our bond from the bank. Due to some terrible administration from Investec we are still waiting. So there is a huge amount of financial strain on us as well.

All this has lead to many sleepless nights and no time for blogging. However I don't want to give up on this blog even if it becomes just a picture diary of the building process. So for a while that's all I'll be adding.

When we started the project, like more people, I was very positive about the builders and the process. Now I simply want it done and finished.

Oh dear I've lost track

So with everyhting else going on I have completely lost track of where I am with this blog. Ick and slap on the wrist. However we have still been taking photos, usually each weekend when Super dad has a chance to climb the magical ladder to the land of renovation chaos.

So here are the photos from the last two (or it could be three, although I'm pretty sure its two) weeks.

You can see the rooms taking shape, but only if you've seen the plan. This is the en suite bathroom through the wall from the nursery.

Where the en suite bathroom joins the old roof.

The wall insulation has arrived.

The replacement tiles arrived. They are red so now we have a patch work. We'll have to add repainting to the roof to our going-over-budget list.

The roof is still not complete but we discovered yesterday that they cannot officially complete and seal the roof until the engineer has signed off on the structure.

The empty space in the floor is for the staircase.

The 'noggins' which make the floor super stable.

The frames for the window are going in. These however are the wrong size...hmmm.

Frame for window in CG's bedroom.

Slowly, slowly, slowly ..... stop

Work has been moving along very, very slowly. We still have big gaps in our roof because they have not found roof tiles yet and I'm pretty sure they have not been looking. Every time it rains I fear the worst and every ceiling that can be damaged has been damaged to varying degrees (replace the rooms whole ceiling to touch ups only).

On Wednesday the rain came in and ran down our passage walls. That was the last straw for me, I was fully determined to get up on Thursday morning and give the manager a piece of my mind. However on Thursday morning said manager woke up on the wrong side of the bed and called his workmen at 8:30 (once they had already changed and started work) and told them he was closing down our site. What!!

So after calling my husband who then called said manager and they had a 'conversation' which ended with the guys staying on site and doing just about nothing all day. Why would he decide to shut down our site? Well the answers were vague but you can be sure it had to do with pettiness and money that we had already agreed (the week before) to pay the next day.

Here's the short version of what we are pretty sure happened:
1. In the middle of February they raised an invoice for the structure (implying that they had met this milestone and wanted to be paid). In the course of the next day our son broke his leg.
2.  We agreed to pay in the next two weeks which is when the bank had promised our new bond would be ready to draw from.
3. Half way through the week our kitchen ceiling is damaged by the deluge and Super dad goes into the roof to control the flow of water. When he's there he discovers that huge parts of the A frames and roof timbers have not been finished.  He contacts the manager and says we won't be paying for the structure until its completed. All of a sudden the structure miraculously starts getting finished.
4. The next week we meet the manager to choose windows and he calls Super dad pedantic for not paying and saying the structure is not yet complete.....'look how much other work we've done' he says. 'Yes,' Super dad says 'but I'm only going to pay for the framework when the framework is done'.
5. They agree that seeing as it is mostly done we will pay over half and then the rest the next week Friday as the bank has also been stringing us along and we will only have the money then.
6. The manager wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides he wants to be paid. So he pulls his guys off site even though he has agreed with the fact that we will pay him the next day. Very mature and professional.

So Super dad reminds him of the agreement and all of a sudden the builders are not leaving the site and everything is hunky dory again. So very strange and irritating. When Super dad phoned the next day (after we had paid) to clear the air everything was sunshine and rainbows again and the excuse for trying to 'shut our site down' ...... they were waiting for their supplier who did not have stock of a larger size of timber beam which they apparently needed before they could continue.

Wow I really wish builder/contractors were a little more honest and mature. So in the end they did not work on Friday or Monday while they waited for the delivery of the new materials.

One great thing that did happen was that they moved the geyser up into its new position and the plumber, Jeff, is a fantastic guy. He listened to all my concerns about the water pressure and agreed to put the geyser into the new roof rather than simply move it along inside the existing roof. He also agreed to put the geyser over the children's loo rather than over a bedroom as I pointed out that if it ever burst I did not want it to ruin the bedrooms. After moving the geyser our pitiful shower (which has been terrible since we moved in) got even worse and so we called Jeff back in the hopes he could figure out how to fix it. He did!! He was the first plumber to look at the shower and suggest that the hot tap might be broken rather than suggesting there was some massive problem with the pressure or pipes. So on Saturday he arrived and changed the shower arm, head and taps and now the hot water pressure is wonderful. We were so excited we had a shower that very evening. Best R300 we ever spent.

View towards where the main bedroom and the en suite bathroom will be.

Triangular hole is the remaining old roof over the lounge. This hole will be behind the en suite bathroom and the nursery walls.

View towards Curious Georges new room (where the existing roof is still waiting to be removed).

View towards the main bedroom and the landing. I think the stairs are going to come up very close to where the geyser is in this photo.

Plastic and tiles still cover the roof which is why it still leaks sometimes.

This valley is where it leaked on Wednesday.

View from the top of the new roof. Wow.

The roof tiles are finally going on

This week they started moving the roof tiles from the old roof to the new roof. I was so excited. Finally we won't have to worry when it rains. Of course this is not the case though because we have run out of tiles already. With all the breakages that have happened when they removed the tiles from the old roof there are no where near enough tiles to cover the new roof.

So now we have to wait for the contactor to find some matching tiles at a demolition yard. Excitement deflated.......

So now they are cutting out the old roof again. At least the inside is starting to look like a real space now. You can even start to get a sense that it might actaully be livable at some point in the very distant future.

Yay the tiles are finally being moved to the new roof.

Out with the old broken tiles. Of course the dump site is right in front of out front door.

Starting to look like a real space now.

Next stop floor beams and noggins (litgtle pieces which create stability in the floor).