A textured ceiling in our bedroom was damaged due to a leaking roof during a storm earlier in the year. As part of the repair the texture needed to be removed. As such we were advised that we needed to vacate our house for approximately three weeks whilst they removed it and go various asbestos clearance certificates. So this required us packing suitcases and moving to a studio at my parent’s house. Packing enough clothing to last two small children was difficult, because at the best of times we do on average one full load of laundry a day. However, we managed it.
Living in the studio was hard. Our son slept in a porta cot that just fit into the small walk-in wardrobe. My daughter slept next door in the main house. We cooked using a portable LPG cooker, had no jug, no toaster or oven. Though I did enjoy staying there, as the walks around Bucklands Beach were terrific due to it being so close to the sea.
While we were living in the studio the textured ceiling removal and ceiling repair were completed within five days of us leaving the house and a verbal clearance was given to the decorators by the removers. By the start of the second week the written clearance had been given. However, this was when things started going a bit pear shaped. Firstly, the scope of the works was changed from not removing all the wallpaper and plastering and repainting to only removing the wallpaper on two walls. The wallpaper was textured, you can imagine the finished result. Then it was they were not going to remove any wallpaper and paint over the textured wallpaper.
Secondly, the painters could not find the colour we had selected. Which was quarter pearl lusta (a Resene colour) that even Dulux managed to tint for us in previous occasions. I think they were using this as an excuse.
We then managed to finally get the loss adjuster to sort out the scope change and settled on getting the two walls that needed repairing plastered and painted (with the other two to be handled by us). However, the project manager could not get the plasterer that he organised to do the job or find another to do the job. After about 2 weeks the project manager found another plasterer and the painters then finished the job. However, on inspecting the finished result, the plastering was an average, the skirtings were not painted and they had not removed our curtains before starting and had damaged some with paint.
Finally after around 7 weeks out of the house we managed to move in. Our children had rooms, however, we still needed to finish the other two walls. So we ended up setting up a makeshift bedroom in our living room for 2 weeks while I removed the wallpaper, plastered the walls and painted them. We also had to accommodate my wife’s cousin and significant other who had decided at a whim to travel to New Zealand from France to walk part of the Te Araroa trail for a couple of months. Fortunately, they were staying a couple of days and didn’t mind sleeping in an unfinished bedroom on an air mattress.
In any case after 9 weeks it is great to move into back into our room. The only things that need finishing is replacing the door handle and painting the timber joinery.
After this episode I will definitely take a time frame and budget on it taking three times longer than expected!