- The way we choose builders is insane: in any other area of my life I only commission things I actually know about - so when I interview people I actually know what they are talking about and CB get a sense of whether they can do the job. With builders you basically go on a) whether they seem nice and b) whether other people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about think they have done a good job
- Buying building work is nothing like buying anything else. When I go to the supermarket I say "I'll have a chicken please" and they give me a chicken and tell me the price and I leave the shop with a chicken. When buying building work there is a complicated game of nerves where you try to 'buy a chicken' and they attempt to sell you a sack of shit and pretend it's a chicken and you have to refuse to pay until they produce said chicken, or something roughly resembling a chicken because you're so fucking tired you don't even care any more
- Your building inspector needs to be goooood. A building inspector needs to be as good as Poirot and Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes all rolled into one. He needs to be able to piece together a small bit of mortar, an uncannily cold breeze blowing from the south west and a shifty look from your builder at 100 paces and figure out you don't actually have a vertical DPC in your window opening even though it's been plaster boarded already. If you have a good building inspector you will cling to him like Kate Winslet does to that wooden door at the end of titanic.
- You need to learn all kinds of shit you never ever thought you'd learn like how to build a fucking cavity wall correctly, what the correct spacing for wall ties is, what a damp proof course looks like and all the places you need to put one (up your builder's bum will be tempting) and what a cold bridge and black jacking is.
- You will learn that your builder may be a human being with as much dignity and tight to be treated with respect as you but he is also trying to swindle you all the fucking time. So don't make him tea, don't ask how his weekend was, don't enter into conversations that last longer than 2 sentences on either side. Don't argue - if you start arguing they have won. Just refer them to your building inspector's latest email/letter.
- You will be more tired than you have ever been. You will wake up at 1 am worrying about the next terrible thing your builder will do but you shouldn't. No one has died, it will all end eventually and nothing is worth this much angst.
Anything else to add?
