Persimmon Homes VI - A new Beginning?

A whole month has gone by since my last post (well, a month and a bit). The last time I posted, we were about to get our kitchen tiles back down...

So, I guess you're curious as to the progress made in over a month; all our snags sorted? I wish!

The tiles were put down on the 10th and 11th of August, and I must say that O'Byrnes the tilers did a very good job. The floor was still not perfect, but the tiles are acceptable - indeed, if this was how the floor had been when my wife and I had moved in, we would not have complained about them.

Now we needed to get the laminate flooring back down, the kick boards in the kitchen back in place, then get the rest of the snags sorted out...

The laminate is proving to be another large chapter in the saga.

The supplier (FDL Flooring in Glasgow) were out of stock of our Calvados Oak laminate. A shipment was on its way from Switzerland, apparently by boat [isn't Switzerland land-locked?], and nobody had any idea of how long it would take to get to the UK.

After two weeks, FDL finally received the shipment, only to find that, not only was the Calvados Oak not in the shipment, but on enquiring, it had be discontinued by the supplier!

It turned out that they didn't put in a special order for the laminate, they just assumed it would be part of their regular order, or so I'm led to believe...

So, now they had to find a suitable replacement. To cut a long story short, FDL eventually found another supplier of more or less the same laminate, and could arrange to fit it (yesterday in fact!).

The fitter arrived on Thursday around 11am. Took one look at the concrete floor in the hall, and refused to fit the laminate. The reason? You guessed it: the floor is too uneven.

He even reckoned that the floor was actually worse than he remembered it (before any remedial work was carried out).

The dining room was, thankfully, good enough (still not perfect though), so he did lay the laminate there - at least we can get our dining room furniture in place. Mind you, the doorway from the hall to the dining room is still out, and the laminate there is flexing already - that will need levelled and the laminate replaced.

Who knows when this will all finish.

On other house related news, while pottering around in the loft, I found a large tear in the roofing felt - that'll need fixed.

I decided to fit some soft close dampers to some of the units in the kitchen, including the cutlery drawer located just under the cooker hob. I dismantled the drawer itself to get better access, and discovered, at the back, there was a plug that comes from the cooker hood, plugged into a socket that:

a) wasn't mounted on the wall (in other words, it is hanging by the wires sticking out from the wall), and b) doesn't even have the socket front screwed onto the dry liner box.

In other words, as the drawers are opened and closed, a 13 amp socket gets pushed about, no doubt fatiguing the wires it is hanging from. In addition, if something were to fall out of a drawer, it could conceivably find its way into the 13 amp socket and cause goodness knows what kind of mischief. If you'll pardon the pun, I was genuinely shocked (though not literally!).

Also this week: we had my favourite joiner arrive to do a few jobs around the house. I'd had a minor run in with him before regarding the loft hatch, and the fact that it had been installed in the wrong place (over the stairs rather than over the landing).

Anyway, this time, he starts off at the vestibule door. The door is not flush with the frame, and a couple of the glass panels are scratched and need to be replaced.

Step one: take out the door, and put in a brand new (unpainted) door.

What?

I don't fully understand what his thinking was, but, he went off, nicked a door that was intended for someone else's house (plot 68 - I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault!). And proceeds to install it.

During the course of this, he discovers that the door frame is not plumb, so he bangs in a wedge in an initial effort to straighten it (this doesn't work, and it is still off-plumb).

Back to the door: He finished the first day by getting the door hung, but it is now even worse than the original door (besides, none of the hinges are aligned properly), and the door doesn't close in the frame properly.

In all, it took him the full day to get that far!

The next day (last Tuesday (12th September)), the joiner turns up again. Today's initial task was to rehang the door between the utility room and the kitchen. With all the screeding going down on the floor, the door would jam after if was about 1/3 opened.

I'd already checked this myself, and saw that the reason was a combination of the floor hight coming up, but also the door hinges being very slightly squint, causing the door edge to drop as the door opened.

The joiner takes the door outside and gives it a quick shaving, and tries refitting it. So far so good, not too much off the bottom please!

The door is better, but it is still catching the floor when it is halfway opened. I point out the problem with the hinges and suggest that straightening them will solve the problem. I explained that I didn't want the bottom of the door shaved any further, otherwise I'd end up with a huge gap under the door when it's closed.

The joiner refused to do anything with the hinges - I don't think he likes being told how to do his job!), he has, what we call, a minor argy-bargy with me regarding the hinges - he even suggested that the hinges "can't be squint because the door, the hinges, and the door frame comes fitted as one piece straight from the factory".

I don't believe that for one second (then again, I'm not the builder, or joiner, or ground worker, or electrician so what do I know!).

At an impasse, the joiner goes off to get his foreman to get him to explain to me that I am wrong and shaving the door is the only way to sort this out...

Time passes...

I wait...

Eventually, I have a look out the front, and there is the joiner (and apprentice) sitting in his car, eating his sandwiches! I am stunned - and I'm thinking I should become a joiner! He turned up at 9:15am, disappeared at 9:30, came back at 10am, had an argy-bargy with me, went off (in a huff?) at 10:15, then sits in his car having his sandwiches? Easy life!

Anyway, I see this and go out and ask him what's going on. He was clearly not happy at me telling him how to do a job, and was basically having a huff. Being pretty angry about the whole situation, I comment on how poor the quality of workmanship is in our house - not just the joinery, but everything as a whole - and it is, in my opinion, poor, and I go back inside the house.

I need to go to the office (I do have a day job!), so I get my stuff together, and go back outside to head off to work.

The joiner gets out, his car, approaches me, and says that he's not prepared to do any more work in my house because of my attitude! I nearly laughed. Talk about a kid going off in a huff - "I don't like you, so I'm not playing any more!" - I am, of course, paraphrasing...

Ok. So I go off to the office and do some work, meanwhile having a thought about the door.

When I get back from work, I decide to sort the door myself - if you want a job done right... and all that.

All I do is to slacken the screws for the hinges, open the door 90 degrees and stick a small wedge under it. A quick check with my trusty spirit level shows that the door is now plumb. I re-do the screws for the middle and bottom hinges, then tighten all of the hinges back up. Hey-presto, one door hung to perfection.

The gap at the bottom of the door is perfect (less than half an inch), and the door doesn't rub anywhere, and it closes perfectly in the frame.

I don't know what joiners learn in joinery school, but I guess this guy took the day off when they covered door hanging...