James the builder

Luckily for you, dear reader, this blog started well after a very long and very expensive court process involving a claim against the builder of our house. The short story is that the court found in our favour and we are now able to get the house fixed up entirely. This is the happy ending we've been waiting for.

James (not the original builder) is in charge of the reparations, and today he came over to discuss the work with us. What we most wanted to know was whether and for how long we would have to vacate the premises, as well as a few other logistics. Would we need to move our stuff out? How long will all of the work take? Are you gonna fix the back door??

The news was all good, it seems. Work will start in about a month. We may not have to move out during that time at all. We will need to move our furniture around a fair bit though, because they're going to bring the floorboards in our bedroom up to do some ventilation work. We've decided it's a good idea to find some storage space for some of our boxes of stuff to provide more shifting room while the work is going on.

The builders will re-hang all of the doors and windows in the whole house that need adjusting after the work too. They'll replace all the broken tiles and fix the paintwork and skirting boards. And all the cracked plaster will come off too, of course. Dusty work, but they also clean up as they go, so it shouldn't be too disruptive. Very good news.

The best thing of all was that James himself was patient and easy to talk to. He gave us a lot of confidence without trying hard at all -- he's got about 22 years experience and for the last 3 or 4 years has been doing only insurance repair jobs like ours. We just can't wait for them to get started.