I've been silently lurking reading everyone's trials and tribulations. It's been lovely seeing your builds progressing and I've loved the photos. It's really given me hope. Our build has been going on forever, so long that the extension thread I first joined has long dropped off the radar.
We are having a dormer loft conversion to add 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. It's a big job because the ceilings have been lowered and the amount of steelwork that's gone in is enough to support the Forth Bridge.
After a nightmare 6 months we are finally getting close to the end - well we were until this afternoon. Our builder (Bob2) has ordered and fitted the wrong Velux in the bathroom. This Velux was a replacement for the Velux that our first builder (Bob1) bodged.
This new Velux is no ordinary Velux, despite lowering the ceilings on the floor below we still need more headroom. After much research I found the solution - a massive 3 windows in 1 Velux that pivots at the top.
I paid Bob2 for the new Velux this afternoon, including the whopping £1200 labour he paid the 3 men he had working with him all day installing it. It was a big job - the roof had to come off. They genuinely worked their socks off to get it up there. We weren't able to get upstairs while the job was being done because it was too dangerous - if I'd seen the Velux, I would have stopped them putting it in.
We went up to have a look after they had gone, and I literally cried. The Velux they have fitted pivots at the centre which means that if the window is opened a trip to the loo could potentially render someone unconscious.
It's been one thing after another this week - it started when the bedroom French Windows I thought I was getting turned out to be shortened height French Doors. I hate them and there is not a lot I can do about it because apparently the opening is too wide for a French Window. Horrible ugly doors. I just wish someone (ie the Architect who is to blame for a lot of this) had thought to measure properly.
DH says I'm not allowed to tell Bob2 about the Velux until Monday morning because I will spoil his weekend 😐He is actually a decent builder - but what the hell was he thinking? I actually had a conversation with him before work started this morning about cowboy builders like Bob1 giving good builders like him a bad name. I do feel a bit sorry for him - he's been dragged into all this and took on another builder's dodgy work and now he's made a whopper of a mistake himself.
We have no money left and I can't see him offering to change the Velux for nothing. Even though it is his fault.