Owning your own home

Ouch - is the teak itself glued down ? definitely looks like they used the wrong product. My only frame of ref is having had 5 finger parquet (tropical hardwood but don't know what) done - they sanded it smooth, collected the dust and mixed that with a resin/filler product and scraped that all over, let it set, re sanded and then finished with bona or junkers lacquer. Then my kids dragged chairs and toys across it and fucked it. *sigh

they did the same process, except the seemingly the glue was the wrong choice.. not sure if it’s glued down tbh.. they’re blaming movement in the floor, but they came round before hand to test the moment in the floor and made all the decisions and recommendations so kind of pissed they’re now going for the “we couldn’t possibly haven’t known” approach

I'm putting some decking in my garden. It's about a 5x5m garden with some lawn in the middle. However, the lawn is unusable - either a muddy bog in winter or a concrete type wasteland in the summer so we thought we'd try to do something nice looking this summer.

Most of the lawn will be replaced with decking. I've got some questions about this later, but for now I was hoping that someone could help me with working out if I need planning permission.

Planning guidelines state you need permission if:

The decking is no more than 30cm above the ground
Together with other extensions, outbuildings etc, the decking or platforms cover no more than 50 per cent of the garden area.
None of the decking or platform is on land forward of a wall forming the principal elevation

I'm fine for those except the 50% one. It will cover >50% of the back garden, but likely not 50% of the total (front and back) garden area. Does anyone know how to interpret this?

They've just used totally the wrong product. Can you scrape it out and the refill the gaps with the right colour product?

e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Osmo-water-based-Woodfiller-250g-Teak/dp/B00HNQJGHC

Last resort is to make a claim under S49 of Consumer Rights Act 2015, with using MCOL or in your local Country Court on the small claim track.

49 Service to be performed with reasonable care and skill
(1)Every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill.

You would need to familiarise yourself with the process & protocols*, but even then it's a bit of a toss of the coin.

* One of which is that you must attempt to resolve this out of the courts in the first instance. This may be to give them a chance to remedy the situation, or to refund part / all of the cost.

You might get quotes from elsewhere for remedying it, and ask for that back.

@NickCJ I think that has to be it. I've laid out all of my finances in every offer I've made, met all the neighbours each time, raved about the house/area and had fuck all luck.
So stupid bid, win it, get the wheels moving, then a bit of brinksmanship negotiating post survey and if they walk away on to the next...

That's a big job though - to refill and then sand it you'd end up damaging the finish on the boards, and needing to sand and finish those all over again.

Which company did the work @rogan?

They did fuck it up though so I’d expect them to put it right.

and our entire floor is now lovely beautiful flooring, marked out by thin white lines.

That is so frustrating

Do you have a before pic? Like have they done a good job other than the fuck up with the filler in between? Because I might be more lenient in that case to let them keep some money

(Why use filler anyway?)

@tbc will post when i have some progress/resolution

Thats the worst bit, the floor looks amazing, and i believe it was an honest mistake, but the white lines have taken it from ‘needs love will be beautiful’ to ‘what the fuck is wrong with that floor’

I’d say they have used the wrong product and your gonna have to redo the full floor. It’s there mistake and they should refund or fix at there cost which by the sounds of it and wiping there hands of it.

If you have to fix a problem like that you need to decide on a mechanical method of removing the glue that works and figure out a reasonable time for the job. Then at least you know roughly what the cost is. Of course they should be figuring this out and sorting it for you without any cost and an apology and chalking it up to experience.

If they're busy they might just run away and it doesn't matter if they feel guilty or not. If they have insurance this would be a time for them to claim on it. They probably have insurance but don't even know if it would be covered.

If I had done this I would fix it myself no questions asked. I look after customers though, some tradesmen don't think that it's worth it. I would never let the customer know but I would be super pissed off and I'd probably be taking it up with my suppliers. Of course I would expect to at least keep the money once I had finished the job, so I would expect the customer to put up with the inconvenience of me carrying out the extra work.

You do need to establish a reasonable method for removing that glue though. That's something you can control.

Thats what you would do in that circumstance, be pissed off, but take it on the chin and fix it and then get the rest of the money from the job but brushing it off is poor.

Yes, and it's what I've done when things have gone wrong in the past. I've kept those customers and got a lot more work from them. Somewhere down the line you have to stand by your work, otherwise what are you offering? You'll have a go but if it goes wrong you're on your toes.

What I was saying about getting the money is you don't want to be in a position where someone else fixes it at your cost because the customer doesn't trust you anymore. If you finish the job in the end you get the money at least.

I've seen people lose their temper with clients, get thrown of site, not get their money and lose materials and tools when this kind of thing goes wrong.

Yeah as you say can come back and end up getting other work out of it, because you problem solved and fixed the issue that happened. Could have easily brushed it off as a problem batch or what ever but some folk just dont give a fuck.

It's understandable different jobs have different rewards. Most of the flooring guys won't expect to be in someones house for 3 months. I understand not everyone is working for themselves and keeping as much of the money as I do. My rate has all this problem fixing built in.

With plumbing/electrics there are different concerns and a big fuck up might get you jail time or cause a lot of financial damage. Everyone in those trades is going to have insurance. But if you put your foot through someones ceiling you either call a favour from a plasterer or fix it yourself right?

Even that doesn't scare from the going to jail, We were at a job recently. Older woman got one of the free boilers in, could smell gas after like a week or 2 in and called transco. Came out stuck a gauge on it, dropping and capped it.

Company that done the job said "we've took loads of photos and it wasn't us as we only worked above the floor" Sadly that does cut it from the way gas safe label it. min you cut into it your liable.

She ended up calling us, turned out a fitting hadn't been soldered pre them and then with them altering the gas pipe above the floor disturbed it but even then they didnt give a fuck.

No point in even reporting it as they are all pure cowboys these companies, showing by there lack of fucks given to the gas leak left.

There was one with electrics not so long ago. New build, installation signed off but a cable had a screw driven into it in the airing cupboard. Someone died and the electricians were successfully prosecuted, someone went to jail. They were employed by a larger company but if your name's on the sheet you're liable.

It’s only when something like that happens and the shit hits the fan that people care. If that house had went bang, it would have been on them and the HSE are desperate to pin the blame on someone when that shit happens.

Of course, once you've had the training you know the risks, you have to be prepared to pay the price if you're not thorough.

As you say, the authorities are not going to get involved if your floor sanders f**k up though. There's no real code to hold them to either.

On the other end of it there are cases where it's not so cut and dry. Homeowners sometimes have unreasonable expectations, tradesmen start to feel nothing is good enough so they don't even try and the homeowners go from one tradesman to another being disappointed with every one of them. A lot of it is just finding the right fit between trades and client. I appreciate that's harder to achieve if you are doing the big one off jobs like fitting a CH system.

Way to put the shits up the homeowners...

New builder hopefully starting today. Got him doing two relatively simple jobs first (I say simple, I'm not doing it....) as a bit of a trial. Stripping and re-plastering two rooms and rebuilding an airing cupboard. He's asked for no money up front as the materials for these two rooms aren't expensive, only pay when we're happy. Which is good, or at least makes me more comfortable.

That's the best approach. No one's going out of their way to make things more difficult but there are so many things that create a happy balance it's always going to be a bit trial and error.

Yeah this is good advice,

I am going to put it on them for now to see if they will at least try and resolve by picking out the glue, else get someone else involved to quote/advise. Thanks.

Well, the labourer who was going to strip the wallpaper has let him down today so it won't be starting until tomorrow now (was actually supposed to start stripping yesterday). But, the builder came round in person to apologise and reassure that the work will start tomorrow by hook or by crook. That could still not pan out, I'm trying not to stress about it too much, but coming round in person added some value to the apology. And we got to discuss some more of the finer points and he had already considered some of the bits I was worried about.

Just be very careful how you frame the request to other trades for quotes. It's weird but a lot of tradespeople won't want to get involved if you mention your dealings with the last lot! It's best just to say it's a problem that needs properly sorting and the guys who did it are not available. Maybe stretch the timeframe a bit too so it feels like they are out of the picture.