Now that my very first renovation project has completed, all that is left before the flat is handed over to the clients is to do the final touch ups, and depending on how anal they are about the rectification works, these project can be handed over as soon as this weekend or dragged as long as months from now.
Knowing my clients and their penchant for finding even the smallest flaws, I can safely say that the hand over won't be happening anytime soon. Every single paint streak is heavily scrutinized and labelled as a defect if it is not completely even with the rest of the wall, the smallest bumps on the doors are labelled as a defect, even hairline scratches don't get off the hook and are obnoxiously labelled.
I have spoken with my clients and tried to reason with them to be a little bit more lax in the spotting of such small imperfections, because the contractors who does all the works are human, there are bound to be small little errors that will pop up here and there, but if it isn't anything that is glaringly defective, then turn a blind eye to it and live with it because a few months from now, they won't even notice that "defect" anymore.
The husband was agreeable and said he will "
close one eye" for some of the imperfections and the wife has grown to be a little cautious when it comes to actually pointing out what she considers a defect to me because I think deep down, even she is aware how ridiculous some of her request are.
There were a few rounds of checks that were done prior to the completion of the project and I was agreeable to the first few rounds of checks, when they took down the defects and handed the list to me, I called up my contractors and told them to rectify the spots that needed to be rectified, some were legit defects, but most of them were extremely minor aesthetics imperfections, and I just got my contractors to fix them all.
As more and more of the bigger issues got rectified, smaller non-issues starting popping up and it just got so ridiculous to the point where I didn't even want to ask the contractors to come down to fix it for them because it was almost akin to calling an entire battalion of soldiers to kill a single rat, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and fix those issues on my own instead.
"There are spots on the door frame that needs a bit of touching up."
I bought a $20 tin of paint with my own money and touched up the frame for them.
"There is a little gap between the carpentry that needs to be filled up with silicon."
I went to buy a small tube of silicone and fixed it myself.
"The soap basket is a little loose, please get your plumber to come and tighten it."
I went to the nearest hardware shop and got my own set of screw drivers, but realized they were too small, so I went home to get the correct size ones and tighten the basket for them.
All those are legit request from them and I did all of them on my own, fixed all the small issues, even went to buy a small tub of wood putty that cost me $30, just to fix a few knocks on their timber skirting, the putty was never used because I ended up just using black marker to colour and conceal the chipped parts, which totally worked.
A few days ago, I finally got the cleaners to come down to their flat and do a final washing, and the point of the final wash is to ensure that the flat is clean enough for moving in, emphasis on
"clean enough". The cleaner's job isn't to make the flat spotless, no one died in the flat, there isn't any need to use any heavy duty cleaners to clean the floors or scrub the walls, the owners will ultimately still have to do their own cleaning up when they move in, because when the movers bring the loose furniture over, the place is going to be dirty again, so there really isn't any point in making the space spotless.
Well, I get a text from the homeowners today asking me...
"Why are the windows still dirty?"
... and attached to the text is a picture of the window with a bit of mark on the outside. I wasn't really thinking at that point and was actually a bit flustered about the so called "
dirtiness" of the window, so I asked them if the windows are dirty on the outside or on the inside, not really sure where I was going with that question, to which the homeowners just went...
"Definitely needs a rewash, I don't think they have cleaned the windows at all."
.... thinking back, I'm pretty sure they did, I mean what did you expect? A squeaky clean window after 4 days? The window panels are bound to get a little dusty after 4 days, especially because the house hasn't been ventilated for 4 days and there was some rain happening during the past 4 days, but at that point, my common sense wasn't working, so I just told them to tabulate all the "defects" they can spot and just send them all to me to take a look, and the photos started streaming in one by one, unsurprisingly, all of them were minor aesthetic issues that I could barely spot in the photos, and they just kept sending them my way.
I got really uneasy for a while and decided since the car was available, I should just drop by the house and hope they are still there doing the spot checks so I can address some of this so called "defects" to them directly, so I grab a bottle of thinner from home and made my way over, the stream of pictures had stopped by the time I was on the road, so I assumed they were probably done for the night and had left the flat.
By the time I reach the flat, they were already gone, so I went ahead and took a look at all the defects they had pointed out to me and not surprisingly, despite having told them them how some of these are not considered defects before, they still stick a post it note on them and expect me to get them rectified. I couldn't fix those issues today, because I needed plaster to even out the small little gaps that should be expected from a paint job done by a human, but I could clean the paint marks off the veneer doors, so I did just that.
I got a relatively dirty cloth that has been around the flat since the renovation started, wet a small portion of it with thinner, and started rubbing away at the paint marks, they came off really easily, and in an attempt to make the process faster, I used more and more thinner and started rubbing the doors really vigorously, that was when I realized the once blue cloth was slowly starting to turn brown, and it wasn't getting brown because of dirt.
Turns out thinner actually damages veneer doors if used undiluted because the doors started getting really cloudy at the spots I was cleaning, so the doors are now free from paint spots, but in it's place are huge wipe marks of the veneer slowly getting worn off by the thinner, the wood stain was slowly getting cleaned off with the paint spots.
I screwed up really bad and I am worried about how they will react to it, but a small part of me also just wants to go...
This isn't the first screw up I have done to their flat though, there was another issue they had with the painting, a minor issue once again, and this was the day after I had told the painter to come down and do the rectification work for a second time.
Normally, the painters will only need to come down once for the rectification works, the homeowners will tabulate the defects and they will get all of them fixed in one visit, that's how it is suppose to go, but with my clients, that is not the case, every time after the painter is done, they will find new problems, and really, after making the painter come down for the second trip, I honestly felt really uncomfortable asking him to come down a third time, not even a week after his last visit, it was free to repair any painting defects but I didn't want to call him down every time there was a small issue, so I decided I was going to solve this issue on my own.
The problem that was presented to me by my clients was this little paint drip that was running down the wall, and honestly speaking, unless you were specifically looking for it, it is not even visible to the naked eye, but my clients being my clients, they went ahead and marked it out as a defect, so I put a post it note on that drip and came back the next day in an attempt to fix it on my own.
I have read online that in order to fix that issue, the drip needs to be sand off first, so I went to buy sandpaper and started rubbing against the wall really vigorously, I got more than I asked for because instead of the drip slowly smoothing out, the entire patch of paint just flaked off the wall, leaving this huge round white gap on what was suppose to be a brown wall.
Now that is a defect! (But it can be rectified with some plastering, so it isn't as big of a screw up as the veneer doors)
That's what happens when you find issue with even the smallest flaws, sometimes things get worst.
Out of desperation, I decided to try and fill that gap with paint, so I dip my brush into the paint bucket and slathered paint on the wall, smoothing it out with my name card, because that was the only thing I had on hand that could work as a trowel, my name card started crumbling apart for some reason and as I drag the edge of the card to smooth out the paint, it left in it's wake black fibers that just spread across the entire area, it was horrible. Left with no other choice, I just painted over those black fibers and decided that the patching up will be done at a later date when I have some plaster on hand.
The funny thing is the clients didn't even notice that dent in the wall when they went down to the site this evening. I was expecting them to send me a picture of the dent and ask me what happen, but they didn't even notice it, and that dent is a lot more prominent that the paint drip they had noticed days before, this is how ridiculous their spot check is.
I feel like the longer they drag their hand over date and the more problems they try and find with the renovation, the more I will try to fix those problems for them and make those problems much worst than they originally were.
What was originally a 95% perfect renovation has now slowly been reduced to a 92% perfect renovation thanks to all the unnecessary meddling on my end that was only brought about because of the unnecessary rectification works they have requested on their end. This sounds completely irresponsible, but if the owners want someone to blame for the decaying state of their home, they can only blame themselves.
I'm honestly just getting really tired dealing with them, now that I have 2 new sites to run, I want to quickly get this first one over and done with once and for all because the second one is already giving me a whole new set of problems to deal with, and to make things worst, I was recently asked to prepare a design proposal for one of my Dad's client for a Landed Property project that I am just completely not interested to do.
This is probably the most stressed I have been ever since I started working, having to be available 24/7, getting text messages from my clients at midnight asking for my opinions on certain things or complaining about certain design decisions I have made without their approval, there are times I am just very tempted to completely switch off my phone for a few hours, just to know that for that few hours, I won't have to deal with any clients.
Would be really nice if I could just get a month off and be completely unproductive, like the good ole days when I was still working for my Dad and not have to worry about money.
