O Brother, where art thou?

I hope that most of you would say that Manuel and I are nice people. We've done our fair share of good deeds (and ok a few naughty things but only when younger...) but we never thought we deserved to be lied to, cheated, deceived or ripped off but it seems anything is possible these days.

You would think that in the last two months since Pimpo broke his leg, that things would have progressed quite a bit. You could also assume, and rightly so, that we would be finished the whole project. The planning permission for the extension came through mid June, earlier than expected. Our builder was obviously keen to get started on it and so were we, but we were conscious of making sure the inside wasn't forgotten about and most of it was finished before moving on to the extension.

When we realised that the costs for materials seemed to be excessive, and that the progress inside the house was slowing down we took action. We informed the builder that he wouldn't be responsible for decorating. Things that Manuel and I could do ourselves we asked him not to do, but when the rain was constant (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18722054) our builder took it upon himself to paint and do general handyman jobs that weren't really required, nor were they asked for.

As stress relief, we got the sledge hammer and knocked down the bathroom at the rear of the house to make way for the extension. Although it was fun and one of the parts I'd been looking forward to, the enjoyment was short lived as the weeks of stress went on.

The bathroom, although works on it were started 3-4 weeks ago, is still not finished. We started to go to the house on a daily basis to check on progress and what we found was this; the newly laid black floor tiles were so scratched, they needed to be replaced which could have had serious consequences on the underfloor heating; the mosaic tiles in the new shelf had to be redone as they weren't on the right angle for water run-off; the builder hadn't made an allowance for the lighted mirror, even though it had been there since June, and so many tiles needed to be broken to wire it up; the builder had continued to paint, even though we had asked him not to; we've found cracks in the newly plastered walls; newly built walls were not straight, sub contractors hours were put on the bill without authorisation or validation; a water mains pipe was hit (in two places) causing 12 houses on our street to lose water supply on Friday night... and that was the straw that broke the camel's back.


So, I hear you ask, what did you do about it? Well, after adding up all the sleepless nights and stress we decided to fire our builder. Although the builder was a nice guy, we just couldn't take any more chances with the new extension. The building inspector has strict requirements on new extensions and we couldn't afford any more mistakes.

So onwards and upwards, our new builder promises to complete the works within 4 weeks which is much better than the 4 - 8 week estimate we got from our last builder.

The sun is shining (finally) and our stress is getting less. Mum - we hope to be in before you arrive so we will make it as cosy as possible for your arrival.

Photo's to follow, thanks to all those who have been supportive and given us advice!