roller coaster ride

There have been plenty of ups and down in the last month.
Ups include: cladding to the exterior being installed, all electrical cabling going in, and near completion of all brickwork.
Downs include: an engineer's report highlighting all of the faults / incomplete items in the build, nasty emails from the builder threatening to drag out the build, suspension of works and the realisation that our contract was not filled out properly (no liquidation damages / delay costs stated - basically leaving us with little-to-no recourse for our builder's slack approach to schedules).

Again, it's been an awesome month of little rain and plenty of fine days, but very little trades on site. This has been a major point of contention as we are 6 months into the build and not yet at lock-up. Our builder states that the contract started when he first stepped on site (January), though the contract was signed in November...this is not in the contract.
He uses a website that records (general) rainfall data to record rainy days - even though some of these are Sundays or days when the slab was curing (great for rain), but tells us that according to the Department of Fair Trading, he is entitled to take these days as extensions...this also, is not in the contract.
In a stupid act of admission, he's noted that wet weather has not held up our build, but is using these 'entitled' days anyway (because he's so terrible at project management and has to use them to finish in time).

Our contract is a standard contract through Master Builders Association and geared towards the builder - I understand this and am not debating it. Unfortunately, we were rushed through the signing of this document by the Home Designer and many pages were not filled in. The Home Designer is not on the contract, they just facilitated the process. The builder who signed the contract is not the builder we deal with day-to-day. In fact both the Home Designer and the signing builder are nowhere to be seen...un-contactable...missing in action...you get the picture.

So now it's down to the builder employee and us. He's not happy with the vagueness of the contract and neither are we. He feels that his boss under quoted on the job and is not making any money, hence his lack of attention to our job (he actually told us this!). We feel that he should take this up with his boss, not us.

We contacted the Master Builder's Association (FYI you have to be a member to get any advice....how many regular mums and dads building a house are members of the MBA???), luckily we knew someone who is a member and asked them about our builder's conduct. They've recommend we send the (signing) builder a Notice of Default and Notice of Dispute for their wrongful actions. Is this just fanning the flames? Will this work in our favour and have the house built quickly, or drag it out even further if they react badly?

They also pointed us in the direction of the Office of Fair Trading, which is geared towards the consumer. I'll let you know how I go with this next week.
While I'm on it though, this back-and-forth with the builder, engineer, MBA and contract has sucked hours of time. Everyday my husband, or I, or both of us are spending time researching products, speaking to experts or writing letters...all in an effort to just get this house finished. I won't even start on the sleepless nights....

The independent engineer's report has been...um, insightful? No less than 17 items have been highlighted requiring immediate rectification, including a massive wooden structure built in our garage roof. Our builder told us the house had been "built to plan", but he'd put in a few extra beams "so the floors don't squeak upstairs" - like he was doing us a favour. Until this report was written, we were unaware that there was meant to be a big steel beam in our house that he'd omitted to put in, and instead installed this bulky, ugly mass that takes up vital ceiling space - that isn't even strong enough! (cue hair pulling out).

When we confronted the builder on this, he told us he had taken the more expensive route by installing the timber beams, allowed us to have level flooring upstairs and given us more headroom in the garage...all bullshit. Just another lie to cover his incompetence and obvious lack of experience.

We are so disappointed by all of the compromises we've made along the way due to his poor project management...and it keeps on going. Can you actually believe he suggested we cut our kitchen cupboards to fit the overhang of the slab (see last post), instead of fixing his mistake and letting us install our kitchen to plan? Totally lazy.

An unusual insight came from our window manufacturer yesterday...he said he often sees people having major, and continuous issues when building their house. He sees them in love with the idea of the house in the beginning, fall out of love during the process, then back in love at the end.

I hope he's right...I hope we fall back in love with our house in the end, because there's not a lot to love right now.