Life at Les Terraces

A few posts ago I promised some examples of the stellar (sorry, I know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit) work done for us by our “soi-disant”, self-styled renovation expert.  Well, the time has come …… (excuse the photos not being oriented properly.  I’ll try to fix another time)

We had a door cut into the wall between the first floor bedroom and the first floor landing. The finish is terrible. At the bottom of the door the plaster fell away, so I had to re-do it. I know that a year of cake decorating courses while I was at catering college would one day be useful!

"Finished" plasterwork??

Professional quality work here too - the sink was moved into the corner. The green box hides some mangy old pipework (re-routed). The floor had to be raised to allow for the soil pipe from the shower. Why they didn't run these pipes under the floor too is a mystery to me.

Here a cupboard was removed, and a new one built at 90 degrees to it. Why they didn't finish the wall and fill the floor is beyond me ...And here we have a beautifully installed light fixture .... professionally centred between the beams

So, a small sample of what a dedicated professional can accomplish over a 6-month period and charging an extortionate amount for his services.  Still, I hear that there’s something called the Chambre de Metiers which may require some investigation …..

Having arrived  back at Les Terraces a fortnight ago I find myself (not altogether unhappily) almost 2 kilos lighter than when we touched down at Bordeaux.  This is the third time that this has happened this year, so it can’t be a coincidence!  Sadly, they’re the same 5lbs that I lost in February and again in May.

It is a very expensive program that involves trans-Atlantic airfares and 2-weeks unpaid holiday.  However, you do get to eat and drink what you like.  No restrictions on beer, red wine or Armagnac.  You can also eat 5 times a day if you feel like it.    The down-side is that it involves working like a dog from 8AM to 6PM with an hour off for lunch!

I know that this diet works for others as Graham lost a similar amount in May and again this trip and my step-father (God bless him) told me when I rang to say a very sincere “thank you” that he lost 6lbs in 5 days!!!

However, I am really pleased with what we managed to achieve  …….. no thanks to the so-called, self-styled “renovation expert” who, instead of improving the house, did a pretty good job at screwing it up.  We’ve taken pictures of some of the work done by his “artisans”, which I’ll upload later (when I’ve worked out how).  There have been some mildly funny incidents, such as the person who went to use the recently extended bathroom and couldn’t get out because the the door stuck in the frame.  It took 2 other people to spring her from the loo!

Yet again we’ve painted acres – ok not acres, but it feels like it – of walls.  This time we’ve also sanded down doors that didn’t fit; I’ve learned new skills, such as basic carpentry and plastering.  I’ve also installed my first light fixture.  I realise that this may not be rocket science, but for someone who spends her time driving a desk it’s quite a departure, trust me.

Saturday morning was devoted to cleaning the incredible amounts of dust, dirt  and ground-in plaster (the dastardly D apparently doesn’t know about drop-cloths) from the ground floor and actually putting things in place, putting loose covers on furniture, setting up the home cinema system and so on.  It really felt good to get to that point.  When we’d got everything in the sitting room in place we decided that it was time to reward ourselves with some time off for good behaviour and set off to people-watch during the weekly market from the vantage point of a table at The Globetrotter.

All that remains to be done now (for this year) is install some additional shelving in a kitchen and paint all of the hallways and apartment doors.  I hope.

Perhaps next week we can relax, enjoy our home and our guests and try not to regain the weight that we’ve lost in the so doing.

Yeah!  We’re on our way back to France!!!  And two weeks earlier than we had originally planned to.  Because once again the bloody builder has screwed things up (see my “going loco” post).  So here in Tortola we’re trying hard to ensure that we have done all that we can to cover the needs of our clients while we’re away (I’ve some business plans to write and a web site to create for some friends), preparing the house for hurricane season and so on.

Thanks to the unreliability of our inter-island airline service we have to leave home at 5 on Tuesday morning to catch a 7AM flight to Sint Maarten in order that we can make our 15:55 Air France flight to Paris.  We’d like to be able to trust the carrier, known locally as Leave Island Any Time or Luggage In Another Terminal, to have the 1PM flight running on time, but we can’t.  That’s another story.

We’re back to making lists, and lists of lists, and so on.  Prioritising jobs etc.  Fortunately for us my step-father, who is a master plumber, has agreed to take a couple of days off work in order to help us with finishing the so-called finished job.  Gordon’s snagging list appears to indicate that most of what has to be done is cosmetic – removing plaster from beams and wood floors, fine-sanding and finishing the patches in plasterboard walls, boxing in exposed pipes and, once again, applying gallons of paint.  However, I’m sure that there is more that we will only discover after we get to the house.

In the meantime we’re fielding threats from the builder.  We didn’t think that he was particularly bright – he’s either dyslexic or functionally illiterate to start with – but his decision to leave a message on our voicemail in which he threatens to use the key that he has for the house (obtained from Gordon on the grounds that he had some light-switch covers to replace) to remove our property was truly stunning in its stupidity.  Needless to say, this has been replayed to Gordon and saved for posterity.  At this rate I believe that we will be seeing him in court.

That lovely message prompted a swift call to the property managers asking that the locks for the front door to the house be changed immediately.  Thank you, Suzanne, for organising that as it gave us some peace of mind.

Oh well, never a dull moment!  So, this time next week I’ll be back to removing paint from my fingernails before making supper.  Don’t tell anyone, but I quite enjoy it!

I want to tear my hair out, rant, rave, pound the walls.  You name it.  The bloody builder has struck again and I, stupidly, fell for it.  He said that he’d finished.  Finally and only 2.5 times his original quote and 4 months late.  Can someone please tell me a good building/renovation story?  Can it really be that all builders are totally lacking in integrity?????  Sorry, I’m ranting.

It’s just that the builder and I clearly have very different ideas of what the word “finished” actually means.  In my mind it means that he has completed every single item on the list I sent him in my email in March.  Apparently, he thinks that he has finished because he’s done everything that he intended to, which didn’t include cleaning up after himself and his work crew.  They left us with a blocked toilet and plaster stuck to the floorboards.  The work of making good the numerous holes that they cut in the plasterboard throughout the house has apparently been left rough with screw heads sticking through the plaster and the walls unpainted.  The terracotta tiles that were removed in order that a new shower could be installed haven’t been replaced.  And he calls this finished????????? The door to the bathroom  fits so snugly that it took 3 people to release someone trapped on the inside. A new cupboard that was supposed to have been made from tongue-and-groove was made from plasterboard instead and the door to it has been installed without a handle and requires the ingenuity of 2 people and  some considerable strength to open.

The reaction of the professional cleaning crew that went in to do a post-renovation spring clean has been one of horror.  This has been reflected by the satellite TV man and the lad who went in to give me a quote for finishing the painting.  I want to rip this man limb-from-limb, pillory him.  But I can’t.  So I find myself seething with frustration.  It keeps me awake at 3 in the morning.  I can’t conceive of anyone being such a fraud and so lacking in professional integrity.  Sorry.  I’m ranting again.

I know that all of this is character-building stuff and that it will provide yet more fodder for the book I keep thinking I’ll write (one of these days).  However, right now my sense of humour, and bank account, is seriously depleted.  We now don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of having any renters into the house this summer so we’ve lost a lot of potential rental income.

Still, I’m a glass-half-full person.  The bright side is that Graham and I have been discussing how best to deal with making sure that the  house is really finished before our first guests arrive to stay on 1st September.  And we’ve decided that one of us will just have to leave the BVI early.  Given the heat and humidity of hurricane season and the ravenous mosquitoes that we are currently enduring I have to confess that this is hardly a hardship.  Although it is an expense, as all of our tickets had already been booked and, as you know, making changes doesn’t come cheap.

So, having discussed everything over the weekend and received the snagging list from Gordon (God bless him) I changed all of my reservations, called my stepfather and wailed “heeeeeelp” (he agreed to take a couple of days off work and fly down to join me) and told Mo that I would be leaving early.

Graham has just arrived at home and told me that he thinks that there’s no point in him staying here for a couple of extra weeks alone, so he’s going to come too.  Now my glass is full!