Firstly the brickie who finally got started on site was working along nicely until the March long weekend, it must have been a good one for him as he never returned! Our SS hadn't been to site for the week after this and then took another week to get someone else out there. So we lost two weeks work waiting for anything to happen. The new guys are suppose to have been there for a week now but I think have only done 2 or 3 days at the most. Its extremely disappointing as we are now a month behind schedule and the new ETA is around mid-June, I'm really suspecting it won't be until July that its all complete. I'm glad now that we pushed Ashford on the liquidated damages clause (they wanted to make it $1/wk we managed to push it to $250/wk), it will kick in mid July and then there will no doubt be a battle to extract any $$$ from them if there is an overrun, everything is all very one way......
The second saga has been the benchtops, after phone calls and emails we finally had a resolution on the issue. Ashford we claiming that the TTI materials are of too low quality to be used (I find this extremely difficult to believe as they are sourced from the same quarries has the other suppliers) and we had to reselect from Gladstone Stone. James at Gladstone was very helpful and we were able to get exactly the same tops for the vanities and a very similar one for the kitchen. Ashford were purchasing the stone via a third party Excel Stone and it seems that the reason for ditching TTI was more to do with them not wanting to pay for a full slab for the vanities when they only need a small amount. A little more truthfulness and a lot less arse-covering from the Ashford office would do a wonder for their customers level of happiness! Lets just hope that this is the last I need to hear about benchtops until I get to see them installed.
On the upside of things our SS could see that the bricks had cost a lot of time so he has started the plasterers ahead of schedule and they are running in parallel. This week most of the plaster boards are in place, the cornices will need to go in next week and then all the patching. Not sure how far they will go until the bricks are finished as its still a bit of mess inside. Anyway its time to take a deep breathe and stay calm.
til next time....
