goodbye builders

Ian Rock reaches the end of ‘phase one’ of his mega extension project and, after the final snags are rectified, bids farewell to his builders

Over the last few weeks I’ve been toiling away behind the scenes tackling some of the smaller jobs that, by design, were not included in the building contract. To my wife’s dismay, at one stage this necessitated our dining room being temporarily transformed into a production line for painting windows.

More recently, I made use of the scaffolding to apply two coats of masonry paint over a stabilising solution primer to the rendered upper wall surfaces.

Decorating may be a woefully underrated skill but it’s one that most homeowners can perform to a competent standard as a means of relieving swollen budgets.

Fixing the gutters

There are certain aspects of a construction project where there is a relatively high risk of work getting skimped. This usually corresponds to ‘no man’s land’ jobs where there is no designated trade, such as installing guttering. As a result, the work often gets done as an afterthought by the labourers because no one else can be bothered. To make matters worse, ordering the materials isn’t without its pitfalls when extending a home, because of the bizarre situation where one manufacturer’s product doesn’t fully connect to the same type made by another manufacturer despite being nominally identical.

To this effect, I had a phone call from Buildbase concerning our gutter order. It turned out they stock three makes of our specified 75mm high black Deepflow guttering, so we decided to stick

with the Hunter brand as it was compatible with the guttering on the existing house.

The builders have now finally got round to fitting the remaining guttering and downpipes except, for some unknown reason, to the front elevation. Knowing that Godfrey, our contractor, was keen to get the remaining scaffolding taken down pronto, I emailed him a reminder — “don’t forget to fit the front roof guttering while there’s still access!”

But poor coordination resulted in the scaffolding being taken down anyway, so his team then had to resort to using ladders to fit the guttering — which predictably has since become a snagging item.

building Control

Mindful that the final payment would soon be due to the builders, I phoned building control to invite them to carry out their next site inspection and flag up any outstanding issues. Our usual case officer was on holiday, so the inspection was carried out by Bill Morgan, a senior local authority surveyor with many years overseeing building projects under his belt.

I ushered Bill around our embryonic extension, clambering up cement-splattered ladders in lieu of stairs to inspect the exposed roof structure. I was pleased to hear that he was satisfied with the visible standard of workmanship. We then spent a pleasant 15 minutes shooting the breeze, speculating about the quality of workmanship on sites in general and why schoolboy errors still sometimes occur. Bill raised the issue of builders not bothering to properly read drawings, echoing one of my own major gripes.

The final building control inspection wasn’t going to be required until completion of all the interior works in a few months’ time, so we now had a clear run to crack on with all the insulating, plastering, services and fittings.

Practical Completion

‘Practical completion’ is the key stage which normally triggers final payment to building contractors. So it’s rather odd that there’s no standard definition of what this actually means in practice.

Generally it’s taken to mean the point at which a building project is complete except for minor defects that can be put right

without undue disturbance to an occupier.

More usefully you might define it as the stage at which all the contracted works have been completed to the agreed standard, which unusually in our case doesn’t include all

the forthcoming ‘phase two’ interior works.

Either way, with the builders itching to move on to their next job, withholding a sum of money as a retention is pretty essential. The standard contractual arrangement is to deduct 5% of each stage payment, releasing half the accumulated sum of money at practical completion and retaining the remaining 2.5% for a further six months as a ‘defects liability period’. But before parting with any hard-earned cash we still had a fairly lengthy list of minor finishing jobs for Godfrey’s teams to get on with — wonky guttering, bowed downpipes, splashes of mortar, and a few patches of rough rendering.

Fitting windows is another potential ‘no man’s land’ job sometimes given to anyone on site with a functioning pair of hands rather than professional joiners, and sure enough there were a couple of poorly fitted windows that had to be added to the list. There was however one sorely festering unresolved issue — the capsized gatepost that Godfrey’s scaffolders had managed to demolish last month still hadn’t been reinstated despite frequent requests on my part. In order to tie up all these irksome loose ends, a site meeting was hastily convened.

We managed to iron out our differences and agree a final schedule of outstanding snagging jobs. To be fair, the builders had done all the big stuff to a competent standard acceptable both to myself and building control. But towards the end of a project it’s very often the smaller things that threaten to blow up into major disputes. So it helps to have a hefty final payment in hand as a builder motivating device, in addition to the retention.

Over the next week Godfrey’s team sorted out the various snagging items that I’d listed, including reinstating the damaged gatepost at long last.

‘Phase two’ begins

As a surveyor, I take a certain amount of pride in getting competent building work done at a competitive price, a character trait that my longsuffering wife Ewa puts down

to “being Scottish”.

The downside to this ethos of course is that you have to be prepared to roll your sleeves up and expend a great deal of perspiration. At least that’s how I explained it to our rather bemused kids,

Kathy and Joe, who are back from university and last week found themselves togged up in protective clothing having been press-ganged into clearing up the site. Barrowing is indisputably hard labour, but then so is the gym, and here we had the added bonus of fresh air. It took a full day to load a mountain of builders’ rubbish into an eight cubic yard skip (hired at a total cost of £264), salvaging any clean offcuts of wood for the stove, the rest destined for a gargantuan garden bonfire.

Although time-wise the ‘phase one’ works have overrun the contractual end date by nearly a fortnight, this is largely down to a couple of ‘extras’ we requested, such as opening up the existing kitchen rear wall and installing an additional drainage inspection chamber.

With the builders now departed and the site eerily silent, I’m experiencing mixed feelings — relief combined with a sense of achievement, but also a nagging inner voice that warns: “You’re on your own now, mate.”

I’ve enjoyed getting to know the various trades and labourers who’ve worked on our site, and have picked up a few useful tips of the trade in the process. But the overwhelming feeling is one of measured excitement, looking forward to the challenge of transforming the dusty internal shell of rough wood, bare concrete and exposed blockwork into a bright and inspiring habitable space.

Overall Mrs Rock and I are pleased with the results so far, and, as there’s no great time pressure, we can prioritise cost and quality even if our extension ends up taking a little longer to complete.

next month: boiler quotes and Finding trades

“with the builders itching to move on to their next job, withholding a sum of money as a retention is pretty essential”