Epic repairs - ups, downs and some sleaze

It's been a while between posts. There's been a bit going on.

After more than a year of energetic inaction, the gods smiled, the stars aligned and I gained agreement from the Body Corporate's insurer, the building service and the real estate agent to do the repairs on my bedroom ceiling. The handy offer of a friend's home while she's overseas for a month provided a firm framework of dates with the added incentive that my accommodation during the repairs would be taken care of. Previously I had been advised that the insurer saw no reason I could not live on site during the works. The "works" involve the removal of the entire plaster ceiling in my bedroom, it's replacement and then painting of the entire room. To facilitate this, all bedroom contents would be removed off site To facilitate the removal, contents from the lounge room and the kitchen would also need to be removed.

Suddenly the offer of dates, meant the real estate agent went ahead and booked everything for this week. This week I'm working for five different clients, travelling interstate, going to a concert (Keith Urban) and many other things. It's the worst possible week for me to be out of home, but after such a long wait, I didn't feel I could ask for it to be put back, even a week.

I spent my weekend organising the full wardrobe and paperwork requirements needed for the week and planning what food to take over to my temporary home. On the return from the first trip to hang my clothes and make the bed, I discovered I had a flat tyre! A woman cyclist had been waving frantically at me at an intersection. I thought she was just being friendly so I waved back. The car felt strange and I was dismayed to discover a large bolt had pierced the tyre. I did what any well-prepared girl does in this situation and called the RACV. Two hours later, Mr Chatty Sleazy man arrived.

At first glance he seemed friendly enough. Then he complimented me on my ability to do a reverse parallel park - as he looked me up and down. I was in my worst track suit pants and my hair was a fright. I just needed to get on with things. I said nothing. As he discovered that my spare tyre was bolted into the boot he told me that "we'd have to get screwing heh heh heh". Seriously. He got on with changing the tyre and then advised me that he would be going for some "massage relief" because "that's what a man needs at the end of a long hard day". Well thanks for that. Get on with changing the tyre thanks! I was very pleased that I was in my driveway and not in some isolated spot on the highway.

It's strange sleeping in someone else's house when they're not there. It was a windy night and I don't know how the house usually sounds. I didn't sleep that well.

After work yesterday I went over to my house to see where things were up to. Front door was not locked. An open can of soft drink had been left on my piano. And nothing had been removed. Everything was stacked in the lounge room, kitchen and spare room. Jackets I had hanging behind a door were lying rumpled on the ground. The pathway to the power mains that I had left in the spare room had been strewn with randomly placed things. I imagined everything covered in plaster dust and my stress levels rose. Some other thoughtful touches were the recycling bins were placed on top of clean clothes. A rug from the floor was put on top of clean linen.

I called the removal boss and gave him the feedback. He was apologetic and said everything would be rectified. I kept my thoughts about proper supervision to myself and took photos of everything instead I emailed the building guy and asked him to ensure the plaster work did not commence until everything had been covered and sealed. I hope that has happened. I haven't been able to go and check today.

I'm feeling lucky that I have somewhere to live for a month. I'm skeptical about whether everything will be fixed by Friday night and nervous about how the hell my home will be reassembled. And with a bedroom light for the first time in over a year, I'll be able to see the mess!

It could be worse. At least I have a home and a roof over my head while I'm not able to live in my home.

I'm profounded - I mean confounded - words matter.

I received a lesson in the importance of precision in language today.

Back in May, during a period of very wet weather I told my real estate agent that I could hear dripping in the ceiling. There was no reaction. Three days later I had water running down one of the walls in my bedroom. The light fitting was sparking as the electricity met the water that was running through there.

A (very handsome) electrician came and dealt with the electricity - in the ceiling - and left a gaping hole in my heart ceiling. Since then I've had no light in the bedroom and a gaping hole in the ceiling. I have taken to wearing a miner's lamp when I'm selecting my wardrobe for the day.

This happened seven months ago.

People sprang into action last December and decided that the week before Christmas was a convenient time to pack and remove the contents of the apartment, remove the ceiling, replace the ceiling, paint the bedroom and restore the contents. I had other plans thinking that my recent five week absence would provide the perfect opportunity.

Things don't always turn out the way we hope. I won't bore you with the details, but I arrived home to be confronted with packed boxes stacked in the lounge room, bedroom and the entry to the bathroom. And I brought suitcases which also needed to be unpacked. It was 42 degrees Celsius and I had to start work the following morning.

You can imagine the conversations I've been having. I'm writing everything down so they can feature in the absurdist script I'll produce one day. One of them involved the agent advising me to "just follow your normal routine". What am I? A rat in a box maze? She clearly thinks I'm insane. Or some kind of contemporary artist making a statement about some aspect of society as I turn my place into a piece of performance art. Shame I can't sell tickets. There's nowhere for the patrons to stand. I've rigged up a periscope so I can watch television. That's the only activity I can reasonably accomplish - unless I consider moving boxes around to be a leisure activity.

Anyway, the precision of language...imagine my initial surprise when the agent shared an email telling me that she had advised the insurance person and the owner that the flat is "inhabitable". After some thought, I decided she was right, but there was something off about the tone of the email.

Today I received another email telling me again that she'd told the insurance guy that the place is "inhabitable" but also that he shouldn't take her word for it and would need to see for himself.  Again, I had a nagging worry that she actually was using the wrong word.

I had to find out, but was unsure how to ask without causing offence.  I settled on asking if she meant "inhabitable" as in I can live there or "uninhabitable" as in I can't live there.

Her single-word response came: uninhabitable.

I imagined the insurance agent being moved to even higher levels of frantic inaction with the vehement statements that the place is inhabitable! Any wonder nothing much has happened in seven months.

Considered with the correct understanding, the email from the agent became even more ridiculous as it finished by stating "the place is [un]inhabitable and the insurance agent is aware of that so just wait and see what happens"!

Lucky the roof wasn't blown off! Imagine what "urgently waiting" feels like when you've got bigger problems than not being able to coordinate your outfit or needing to use a torch when you make your way to the bed. Add some boxes into the pathway and you've got added excitement at bed time.

My response in this situation is to initially get angry, then I go floppy and then I start looking for comedy to exploit. I can't even drink as an activity because I've given up alcohol for February as part of Feb Fast.*

Oh and I'm also taking legal advice.

* See how hard it is! I'd love you to sponsor me and support programs for young people who suffer from addictions

Fixing the hole

Suddenly there's a flurry of urgency to fix the hole in my ceiling, caused when a broken roof tile let the rain in and turned the ceiling into a soggy mess and the light into a fizzing danger zone.  This all happened in May.  After the initial stream of tradesmen and insurance assessors the interest in the hole in my ceiling returned to zero.

This didn't really bother me.  Although finding clothes in my wardrobe was like mining underground and applying makeup required a leap of faith, the prospect of living in a space where the ceiling is removed, replaced and painted kept me quiet.

Last week I had some missed calls from the insurer's builder.  It seemed like he thought I was the owner so I referred him to the real estate agent.  A couple of days later, I received an email from the agent asking if it was okay for her to give the key to the guy for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning so he could "do some insurance work".

I knew from the conversation I had with the insurance assessor on the day they made the assessment that the ceiling would need to be removed, a new one put in and the room painted, so I wasn't quite clear about what was going to happen on Wednesday morning.  I called her.  She didn't know anything and told me to speak to the guy.  I did.  He said they needed the room emptied and it would take at least three days to complete the job.

I called her back and repeated what I'd already told her about the works to be done.  Where was all my stuff to go?  Her suggestion was to put it in another room.  I live in a small two bedroom flat where all the rooms are used.  There's no space to just transplant a whole room of furniture and clothing!

Before I head interstate again (which would provide an ideal opportunity to do the works) I need to pack up my small personal items and find somewhere to put them.  This is easier said than done when I have a lot of work on and doing it at night time is challenging because it's dark!  My bedside lamp is designed to create a mood, not a work site.  A local charity will discover a donation of several handbags which I had forgotten I had, so I dusted them off and hope others will appreciate them.  The benefit is an enforced clean out, but the timing is awful.

Apart from these logistics, there's the issue of providing unsupervised access to my home for a bunch of work men whom I've never met.  A friend who has lived through plastering said to be prepared for the whole house to be covered in plaster dust!  None of it is good.  And it's made worse by the fact that the extent of the damage would have been minimised if the agent had done something when I first reported that I could hear dripping in the ceiling!

There's nothing I can do, but embrace the opportunity for a clean out.  Embracing with gritted teeth.

I told you I could hear dripping!

Back after a brief hiatus.  Various things piled up and toppled over and I was on the bottom of the pile. And here I am today with some actual (rather than metaphorical) piling and toppling.  It all started with the dripping.

A couple of nights ago I heard a sound in my ceiling when I was in bed.  I'm on the top floor so it wasn't neighbours walking around.  It sounded like water dripping.  I duly reported to the real estate agent that I could hear water dripping in the ceiling.  I heard it again last night.

This morning I happened to be at home when there was a very heavy downpour of rain.  I went into the bedroom to see if I could hear the dripping sound and was confronted by water trickling down the wall behind my bed!  Well, that confirmed it - I wasn't crazy,  I had been hearing dripping.

I immediately called the real estate agent.  Mine is pretty good most of the time.  She is still afflicted by the property manager's malaise - tenants are the bottom of the pile and nothing is really urgent until it's really urgent.  As I was on the phone to her, I heard sizzling and crackling and water started to run from the light fitting in the ceiling.  The property manager's first words were something like "well it's raining...no one is going to come out while it's raining."

This is the kind of statement that infuriates me in this kind of situation.  Firstly, I was very aware that it was raining.  Secondly, the longer it took to get someone to stop more water getting into the ceiling, the more serious the situation would be.  Thirdly, it's still urgent and the cumbersome processes when you have to deal with layers of different organisations take a long time to navigate.  You have to start right away.

I felt my mind leaping to the worst case scenario, so took a breath and thought about all the ways that this situation wasn't as bad as it might have been.  How fortunate that I was at home this morning!  How pleasing that I wasn't away somewhere leaving the problem unnoticed for days or maybe weeks.  The ceiling hadn't collapsed, so that was something.

I called the electricity supplier about the sizzling electricity and had a conversation that was frightening but later revealed to be hilarious.

At this stage I had a plastic bucket sitting on towels on my bed catching the water from the light fitting and towels on my bed head catching the water trickling down the walls.  The man at the electricity company said that I should not touch the bucket or the water in the bucket because it was likely to be electrified.  It seemed intense, but I wasn't going to argue and I didn't want to be electrocuted.  I asked him what I should do when the bucket needed to be emptied.  He said that was my decision.  I thought he had misunderstood the question so I clarified that I meant I wanted to know if it was safe just to tip the water out.  He said it was my decision.  I didn't understand the answer so asked him what he meant.  He then said he couldn't say anything because of the legal risk.  If I followed his advice and was still electrocuted then I might sue them.  Well probably not if I was dead, but I didn't point that out.  He then said I should vacate the property until further notice and stay away from the taps if I was going to stay.  Since I had to be there to meet plumbers and electricians I decided to stay well back from the killer taps.

Within half an hour two blokes from the electricity company arrived to see what they needed to do about supply to the property.  They looked and promptly flicked the mains switch in the switch board.  I asked them what I should do with the water in the bucket.  They looked at me as though I was a crazy cat lady and said, deadpan,  "Empty it." I laughed and explained the conversation with the guy at the electricity company.  They guffawed and shook their heads.  "Yeah, right.  So you've got a bucket of electricity...ooooh!"  They left muttering to themselves about idiots.

With that done I went into the village to buy lunch and a plastic drop sheet to cover my bed.  The $2 shop had a huge one for $2 so I bought two.  When I arrived home to cover my bed with it, a big yellow-brown patch had appeared on my fresh white sheets.  I'll bleach it later.  Buying the sheet was a good idea.

I then received a succession of phone calls from tradies called Steve and Mike and Josh.  The plumbers went on the roof and discovered two broken roof tiles.  I scouted around the property and found a couple of others lying around so they were able to stop more water filling the ceiling.  They talked nonchalantly about the prospect of ceiling collapse and replacement of the entire ceiling.  I started to think about the logistics.

Then the (very handsome) electrician arrived - all tall and broad shoulders and twinkly eyes and nice hands.  He was friendly and told stories of strange people he encounters on a regular basis.  I hope I'm not one of his stories he'll tell to the next customer.  We talked power points and my lack of them.  He told me about the power points he has installed in his place - it sounded like heaven, compared to my one power point per room.  I had power point envy!  I was sorry to see him leave and wished I had the courage to say out loud what was on my mind - it was all about inspecting my fuse box but I'll leave that thought there.

The dripping has finished and I'll be able to sleep in my bed tonight.  Hopefully the ceiling won't collapse on me.  And even if it does, I'm still pretty well off.  Even though I've just seen an enormous spider lazily walking along the water wall.

After everyone had left and the electricity was back on I boiled the kettle.  It was one of the best cups of tea I'd had for a while.

Interior decoration brought to you by the weather.
© divacultura 2013