Persimmon Homes VI - No Hope

You would be mistaken to think that, by now, we had our floors sorted out. It was four weeks ago, last Tuesday, that Persimmon Homes started lifting our wonky flooring in order to level the concrete floor underneath.

Today, the thirtieth day (30 - count 'em!), we are still not there!

So, what's happened since my last blog entry? I'm glad you asked:

Since last Friday, I was promised, by the Site Agent (Scott Bryson), that he would turn up at 9:30am with the Contracts Manager from Harte, with a 'grinder' of some sort, to grind down the high spots in the floor (why this wasn't done in the first place, I'll never know).

Monday arrives, and Scott does indeed turn up (at 9:45am) with a couple of guys from Harte. I didn't get their names, but one of them was the Harte Site Agent for this development.

He came across as pretty arrogant, took measurements of the floor, tried to blame the unevenness on the screeding, and was generally unsympathetic (maybe the whole problem was his fault?).

They work out the high spots (directed by me - I'm still amazed that no-one is going and checking the entire floor, it's up to me and my wife to spot the problems!), but not one of them had thought to bring any chalk to mark out on the floor. Luckily, I had decided at the weekend to buys some - that's how sceptical I am of these 'professionals'.

Anyway, no sign of any 'grinder', but they would get one for Tuesday (yesterday) - they all referred to it as a 'scrabbler', which turned out to be a 'Scabblier'

So, no progress on Monday.

Scott arranges for Harte to grind out the high spots on Tuesday, the cleaners to arrive to clean up the dust mess, and for the tilers to arrive to tile on Wednesday (today).

Tuesday comes, and Harte appear with a scabblier operated by a pleasant, honest Joe (literally). He seems pretty good, and cracks on with grinding down the concrete - I'm still not convinced that enough has been ground down, but, hey, what do I know? I'm just a techie bloke!

The cleaners clean up (the level of dust was horrific), and Joe and his mate go on to screed over the areas that were scabbled and the areas chipped out by the tiler last week.

The floor is looking so-so, and when this morning arrived, the tilers turned up at 9am, and I had to tell them that they wouldn't be able to tile. The reason? The screed that was put down at 4:30pm yesterday was still wet in several places! Even now (7:30pm) there is a patch that is pretty wet!

No more progress today (never mind the fact that the decorator was supposed to be here all this week).

Tomorrow, the tilers are coming back to start the tiling. Unfortunately, I'll be away for work (early till late) so I won't be able to watch them. On top of that, I noticed today that the cloakroom is still looking very ropey. Here's a cracking photo showing how the floor is falling away from the wall quite sharply. I'll be very interested to find out how the tilers deal with this.