Family matters?

Garden gate into refurbished apartments

FAMILY MATTERS?

I don’t know why, likely I wanted to see how far he would go, how literally he would impose “You will get no special treatment. I will treat you the same as anyone else I work for.” Blossom was his aunty. Families do tend to look after each other so perhaps I simply didn’t believe him though I have heard relationship is the worst ship that ever sailed. And of course, the cliché “Don’t go into business with family” is often banded about to excuse disputes. On the other hand, there are clubs, whole societies which specialise in mutual help, school connections and the like. And why not? Things don’t have to turn out bad. Anyway, maybe he treated everyone well.

However, I should have sent him home there and then. Because looking back, we were abused by an arrogant, blustering, nervously vibrating terrier’s tail, though I’ve no wish to disparage the character of a decent dog. And I thought, as Blossom’s sister had intimated, they had no work and were in financial trouble, there would be achievement for both of us by joining forces.

Anyway, I don’t remember why, but Blossom and I went on holiday to Cyprus for a week. We chose Cyprus because there was a property there for sale on Barter which we wanted to look at thinking it may be a future bolthole.

Before we left, we discussed with Family Man and the electricians, progress to be made in our absence, particularly the lighting in the open-plan balcony flat. Lighting is an area I find intriguing. It’s ability to effortlessly change a space; a utility; a necessity which can be a constant source of interest; can renew and refresh and surprise, and cheaply. I’m not an expert on lumens, just a dabbler playing and unrestrained.

I rejected Family Man’s suggestion of recessed GU 10’s in the ceiling. I find the lamps difficult to replace, fiddling about perched on steps, officy-ish, sense blunting, anything will do; pretend it’s not there, laboratory to live in.

So, imagine my distress when returning I found nine holes in a neat grid over my head. I felt diminished, over-ruled. Just what I didn’t want. I wanted pendant lights placed where I wanted them and a dimmable design treat.

I don’t get angry when I’m hurt, have a tantrum, shout, and throw things. I cower and retreat and withdraw to consider. So, the job stopped for days, maybe weeks as I pondered what to do. I could of course have brought the plasterers back to fill the holes and skim the ceiling but that was an expensive option which would have produced a result I wasn’t satisfied with. My next thought was ceiling roses acting as polystyrene patches over the holes. Not a lot of outlay and no labour costs. Could be very decorative, flowers and fruit colourfully painted. What a good idea? But I never got on with it. I don’t know why, perhaps deep-down I thought it was tacky. And so, the whole scheme stagnated. Until one day, looking up came, ‘Roses are flowers, why not a flower garden on the ceiling?”

I grabbed it. Snatched it out of my mindsight. Could it be done? Who could do it?

The first artificial flower specialist I approached made an appointment to visit the site but phoned later to say her work was too expensive, more than I could afford, and she wouldn’t be coming. Another good face-slapping to recover from. What was wrong with me?

Eventually a friend and frequent hotel guest who happened to be in the florist trade, pointed me in the right direction. Three designs were submitted and the one I chose was executed. Sensational, brilliant, everything I wanted. The nine holes thus proved to be the seed, not the golf course and having recessed dimmables fitted became discreet garden illumination. Another wilful problem wrestled to submission.

“They want £150 a day each,” Blossom said.

That was £150 a day for Family Man and £150 a day for his father. I knew we couldn’t afford that, but like a laid-back fool I agreed to it. We were feeding them three meals a day, quality guaranteed by an expert Italian chef, and providing accommodation as you would for visiting family. Room rate £50 a night, Breakfast £9.50, Evening meal £15-£20 and lunch. All up they were benefiting to the tune of upwards of £250 a day each.

These costs were not introduced before they started. Family Man said, “We look at the job first, do a bit, and then when we know properly what’s involved say what we want.”

The suggestion seemed reasonable, but I shouldn’t have agreed to that either. Trying to get along, it turned out, wasn’t really part of this equation because when they sprang this ‘pounds’ a day on us the house had progressed to a point where I didn’t think I could pick up the pieces and resume doing it all myself. They were doing things Family Man thought of without much consultation and some of it, I’ve come to think, not best practise.

There were differences of opinion about the worth of some of my ideas. My soundproofing under the floorboards as recommended by an acoustics expert having rockwool to deaden inter-flat nuisance. I knew from living in flats at various times, and in the hotel, how irritating others walking about can be. My electric underfloor heating, my out-dated plumbing preference and my refusal to have gas supplies to the flats with combi-boilers didn’t go down well.

And it got worse than £500 a day. Family Man started to pester me to add to the payroll two Lithuanians. At first, I was having none of it but eventually I gave in. Fool.

Why he was obliged to these people I do not know but his persistence suggests he owed them something which we ended up paying.

When I intimated that we had no money left Family Man conveniently organised a £50,000 loan from an associate of his and a nice little earner it should have been for them.

Altogether when he left to go back to a former employer leaving his assembled workforce which he said he would supervise from a distance with a phone in his ear, having worked four days a week from the 16th of February to the 28th of April he had been paid £9189 in cash. Family Man’s father took seventeen thousand five hundred and eighty-nine pounds fifty pence from the sixteenth of February till the ninth of September. Altogether father and son and the Lithuanians and an odd one or two others here and there cost us thirty-three thousand six hundred and ninety pounds and eighty-one pence cash.

We complained to the remote Family Man that the Lithuanians didn’t seem to be doing much in his absence, taking weeks to make very little difference, to which he responded.

12th April 2009

Blossom,

Don’t take what is following the wrong way I am only trying to explain our position. I am happy working for you, and we are not about to pack up our tools and leave! We will discuss further on Tuesday, but we need to take the following into consideration.

With regards to Arnold, he said he was finishing some boarding in the back flat before he was starting to dig in the front. He told me that he was leaving at about 5, but that would depend on public transport. I will have to have a look what he did when I get there before I can comment further. The tiler I cannot really comment on until I see what he has done, but he may have had to give Arnold a lift boarding a ceiling in the back flat. Arnold cannot lift the 8’ x 4’ plasterboards himself and he has possibly given him a hand with this. I will say that, if Arnold does not come back, then the work is left for him to carry out will have to be undertaken by us, thus delaying the joinery/building work further. Arnold is also good at carrying out general building works and under supervision he is a viable source of labour on the job.

With regards to cost, then they will only get paid for the time that they were with you, however, I will say that the job that the tiler is doing is very, very cheap. I paid my tiler £200/day at my house and the quality is roughly the same. I have said that I will use him at my house in the future and looking at his work, he is well worth the money that he is getting.

His progress has not been to programme due to the fact that he has had to give Arnold a lift on numerous occasions with boarding the ceilings. As you are aware, I asked David to give us a hand with this but he was always too busy to help. The other factor with regards to the tiling is that we ordered spacers/corner trims on the Monday before you went on holiday, and we did not receive them until the following Monday. Gordon had ordered all the materials for the tiling, so I thought we had everything we needed to progress the works. I will say that, at no time have either one of them been standing around doing nothing. I would not have had either of them there if I thought they were doing either a bad job or weren’t value for money.

With regards to progress and the length of time it is taking. The plumbing and electrical elements of the job have hindered us somewhat: we have undertaken the plumbing, and this has delayed our progress with the joinery/building works. I caused some delay with the electrical contractor, but I was only trying to get you a better deal. As it turned out, the guy I had in mind must have become busy and therefore did not quote.

There is still a lot to do and unfortunately there is not a great deal I can do about this. I will discuss with you how we will progress works and take them to a finish. The top flat is not finished and I have listed a few of the reasons why, but generally these are the types of reasons why the rest of the job has not been completed- we did not get the panels from my friend when I wanted them; we had to fix a leak on the roof; we had to order additional kitchen units; we could not order the worktops due to funds not being in place; the spacers had not arrived to allow the tiler to finish; the electricians had not 1st fixed the kitchen; we have had to take plaster off the walls due to damp and the list goes on.

The fabric of the building is the most important part of the project and if that is not correctly done the end produce will not be acceptable. We are endeavouring to carry out the works to the best of our ability and to as short a timescale as possible. I cannot delay my start date of 20th April as I committed to this a number of weeks ago. My boss did say to me at the time, that if I did not start on this date, he would have to get somebody else to do it. However, as I have said, I will still be involved with the job, and I will do what is necessary to complete it. I will be working on the Harwich Morrison’s w/c 27th April, so dependent on the length of time I am on site I/we (my colleagues) may be able to give your job a push. I cannot risk losing the job in the current economic climate, it is a very good deal, and it would be foolish of me to jeopardise.

Just to explain the 3.5-day week. This has only applied this week, and this was due to the bank holiday traffic. We do not get paid for travelling and we heard a lot of reports o the radio regarding heavy traffic, and we wanted to get home at a reasonable time and to not sit in traffic for hours. We have left on Thursday afternoons previously but there have been reasons for this, ie. picking up kitchens etc. The other factor is my family. I did say to Kelly that I would only be away for 8 weeks, but due to the additional building works and plumbing, it has taken somewhat longer. She is struggling at home with the two boys, and this has swayed my decisions sometimes regarding our travel plans. But again, you only pay for the time that we are on site.

The one thing that does need to be said is that to progress the work on site and finish the job you need people on site. Dependent on what happens with Arnold/tiler we may need to get local people involved and I would imagine that this will cost considerably more than what is being paid out at the moment. As I have said above, the fabric of the building is the most important part of the job and I know that you like nice things, but in my view, this should be secondary and should be thought about once the job is complete and you are financially secure to allow you to buy the nice things. Walls/ceilings/floors need to be plastered/painted/tiled/laid before you can put the nice things on them, and this has to be at the forefront of the decision-making process.

Things that need to be thought about so as to not delay the project further are -

Kitchen design to 1st floor – Are we going to the expense of having a free-standing glass table built into units. I will also have to look into getting samples of doors so that we can try to incorporate the ½ kitchen that you have previously purchased before I order any new units/doors. tiles also have to be ordered.

Floors generally- tiling, wood, carpet.

Kitchen design to ground floor- Due to the design of both the upper floors, we need to look at which way we plan to use the kitchen units in the garage and whether it can be matched or whether it can be used.

Bathroom equipment – Toilets, bidets and sinks, taps for both floors need to be ordered.

Bathroom to ground floor and kitchen – what tiling is required.

Staircase in front house- sound insulation?

Underfloor heating – needs to be ordered. I did not order previously for the entire house, due to limited funds.

Doors – we can get plain fire check doors that need to be painted for about £50/£60 or we can get veneered ones for about £150, and these will be finished in factory.

Ground Floor Flat – Are we going to install steel over window and are we removing middle wall. Harwich Glass need chasing up with the doors and we need to get a template for curved window in back flat.

Love

Bullshit! How did I deserve this impudence? At this distance I can sense the springy spite. What kind of vindictive devil had I been dealing with? Nice things indeed, nice things. What had I got beyond my station? What shouldn’t I have been reaching for? The subtle depravity of an angry builder, beaming, downloading, spitting acid, splinters flying, shouting “Do it my way dumbo. Fooled you dodder.” A sly, arrogant badness trying to cover all his arses by answering questions before they were asked. What was his satisfaction in revealing himself, and why, where did he get such a hand.?

Reminded of Lituous, the expert tiler recalls he’d lifted two rocking slate tiles off the kitchen floor and so doing broke the underfloor heating element. Very helpful, after being told not to touch them.

They’d finally left us cleaned out and not a dwelling in a lettable condition. It’s making me sick to think about, but we allowed it partly because we didn’t want to fall out with the family, and we thought we were helping them.

We struggled on my style, making economies, doing work myself with light fingers. Buying things, kitchens for instance through Barter and picking up gems in showroom sales display items. It took us a whole year to get two of the flats to a letting condition, though I worked on snagging and improvements myself, fine-tuning almost up to the bankruptcy appearance.

Kitchen and Bedroom of 'Garret Apartment', first to be completed.

We did manage one major change. We converted the two offices on the ground floor into the Garden Room Apartment. Accommodation with a wet room, bedroom, kitchen, living room, hallway giving wheelchair manoeuvrability without building in the usual stigmatizing ugliness. The layout was by an architect on Barter, and we employed a structural engineer to design the steelwork necessary to the removal of a wall. The whole of the work was carried out; electrical, plumbing, tile laying, plastering by a local firm. When their bill finally arrived, it proved to be an astonishingly low price. We agreed to pay by increments, but our first cheque was never presented to the bank. However, things we supplied later, settled the account amicably. We remain friends. This interest was a huge help.

The garden apartment bathroom

The whole four flats became art works with uniqueness and surprise producing frisson and behold with high end nice things well placed as prophesied. It was desired accommodation with holiday let potential. We were told often, through wow utterances, “too good for Dovercourt, and punching above your weight for Harwich.” This was the result we’d aimed for.

Mews Apartment Bathroom and Kitchen/Diner after completion with 'nice things'

Balcony Flat bathroon completed.

Blossom theorizes that my sole purpose in buying the house, number 30, was to enjoy myself, flexing my imagination and creating, a kind of pastime, a hobby, just a pleasure-seeking exercise.

I enjoyed myself I cannot deny and so assert that the application of pleasure is not a bad motive. To give pleasure whilst gaining pleasure must be the absolute definition of the purest love.