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!