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Building Dramas Build

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After we left our Vorabnahme, Kay immediately started addressing the bathroom problem. We could ignore all the other mistakes, but the grout problem and uneven thresholds could be the ruin of our carefully planned moving weekend. See… we have, in fact, cheekily scheduled a handover of our old flat the weekend after we get the keys, so if just one thing goes wrong and we have to wait… we will be homeless.

We emailed and called in the days after our visit and our contractor said he was working on it, but two weeks after our Vorabnahme, we were still waiting for our contractor to procure the piece of paper that said which colour of grout we ordered.

How long can it take to get a little piece of paper?

After 2.5 weeks the contractor finally confirmed that yes, the grout really was the wrong color. Then they wrote that since “we” are running short on time and this really requires a lot of work to fix, they wanted to know if we would accept the defects for a price reduction.

…and we’re supposed to agree to this without knowing how much that is?

I was frustrated that instead of offering us a quote when they are short on time for repairs, they were mainly asking if they could get out of fixing their mistakes. I could live with the problems for a certain price, but I wasn’t going to accept the defects just because the contractor messed up and didn’t think the flat would be ready on time.

After three weeks we finally received a quote… and it stunned us. Bathroom renovations start around 15-25k PER bathroom here. So I was actually pretty angry to find out that they offered us a whopping 400CHF.

Um. No. A few hundred francs is not how much it would cost to fix this. If WE would get someone in there for a quote to take down all the tiles and remove the grout (or replace the tiles entirely) and then to re-do all the walls and floor to be flat without breaking any of the other hardware or furniture in the bathroom, it would probably cost us 10,000-15,000 CHF per bathroom. Because labor is just that expensive in Switzerland.

We said “no thanks” of course and the next day the tiler “reevaluated” his quote and offered us  600CHF. Whoo.

Yeah, if it’s such a cheap (for Switzerland) fix, those guys are going to fix it the way we wanted it. And they are going to do it on time, or they’ll be paying for our hotel. We didn’t expect a crazy 10-20k quote, but I had hoped they would offer us something that was reasonably fair considering how much money it will cost them to fix it themselves. But instead they just tried to shave corners and chance saving money on their errors.

So four weeks after our Vorabnahme and four weeks before we move, Kay was in Mexico and I had to call the contractor and clarify if they are taking all the tiles down or just removing the grout. Calling people in German is nerve-wracking enough anyway, but our contractor has a very thick Swiss German and to me it sounds like he has marbles in his mouth. On his cell phone reception, I barely understood anything he said.

He *could* have said that yes, they are taking all the tiles down first as we prefer. But he also could have said no, they are taking down some of the tiles and others they will just take the grout out. I’m really not sure. He said a lot of “Oh it will be done on time according to the protocol.” Very assuring. Not.

I asked him if he could confirm everything in an email “so that my husband can read it in Mexico”. Cough cough. And because I could read the email and figure out what the heck he said!!

Anyway, understanding everything or not… it was clear that he said the place will be ready on time, according to the damn protocol. And you can bet your ass we are going to have a third party surveyor with us to make sure the “protocol” is up to standard before we sign off on our home!

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Vorabnahme : Pre-acceptance Visit

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Pre-acceptance. The point at which our new build was supposed to be “finished”.

It also marked the one official point during the building process where we could survey the flat and address any issues which must be changed before our contractor hands the key over in July. I had both anticipated and feared this day since we signed our sales contract in April 2012.

With only eight short weeks after our pre-acceptance appointment, we wanted the flat to be as perfect as possible without any glaring mistakes before we got to this meeting. This is the reason why we made sure to visit our flat as often as possible during building, so we could verify that no time-intensive or irreversible mistakes were made.

On May 12th, I stayed up late into the night preparing the list of all lists indicating the mark and make of almost everything in our flat. What color is the floor? Is it the right material? Is the fridge the right model? And so on… So when we started out in the kitchen on May 13th, I could open the dishwasher and check my list to see that it really was the correct model we ordered.

Yup. It was.

But not everything was finished. Our appliances were all in, but the kitchen floor and wall tiles were not yet installed. That utility shaft hole was also still in the process of being patched up. Hrrmph.

But our granite counters were in and they looked great. Below you can see that they still need to trim the cabinet door for the trash system to close properly.

The contractor meeting us there (the one we kind of loathe for never answering our emails or calls and always going on holiday) walked around the flat marking cracks or wall defects that still need fixed. It almost made him seem useful! Below is the other side of the utility shaft from the living room side where we saw the hole before.

But other than not being finished, I was pretty happy with the kitchen.

The electricity was not turned on yet so we couldn’t test that or the temperature controls. Nor could we test the air ducts in any of the rooms and because the window handles were not installed for security reasons (workers could leave them open and people could break in) we couldn’t open and test the windows. The shutters were also not installed yet.
Have you already noticed a growing list of things “not done” yet?

Workers actually were pretty lazy about installing the wood molding into the apartment and the screws are not flat. Many hang out quite a bit and could catch on something. They look shitty when you look at them from standing, but our contractor doesn’t think this is a problem because it is “within the tolerance”. We’ll see about that. I’m mostly concerned that if we think it looks shitty and we try to sell the flat to someone else, they’ll say it looks shitty too. And that would be a problem.

This is inside our built in wardrobe, where I mentioned to you last time we are expecting an outlet to show up at some point:

Yep, still no outlet there. But a nice little picture…

And the main difference from the last time we saw the house is that they have now installed the bathroom hardware for the soap dishes and toilet paper holders.

Almost there!

We checked the height of the hardware, opened mirrors and counted the shelves included. We tried to be pretty thorough, but the contractor was moving through the flat pretty quickly and with his assistant and Kay, we had four people trying to shuffle through all the places in the flat at the same time… it got a bit tight in the half bath and pantry!

For now, all the soap dishes and cup holders for the bathroom are wrapped up somewhere safe to be handed over when we get the keys.

I was a little disappointed the glass shower cabin and towel rack are not installed yet. Something else to check later!

Inside we checked for outlets and shelves.

We couldn’t go outdoors because the darn balcony/window handles situation, so all the balcony doors were shut, but here you can see they are still in the process of laying the tiles and building up the privacy fences.

We have been told that fence should continue the rest of the way and not suddenly become so short. I really hope that is the case or we’ll get to know our neighbors very well… No sunbathing for me?

View from the balcony looking over towards the kitchen side of the flat.

The master bath. Oh the master bath.

By the time we got here we’d been through the kitchen, living room, hallway, pantry, guest bath, guest bedroom and master bedroom. It was actually the last place we visited and the first place we really noticed something huge.

Here you see all our bathroom hardware in and it looks great. The whole bathroom looks great at first glance.

Then I look over here and check my all encompassing List. “Grouting color” I read. Hmm.

Hmmm….  HMMMM….!

We were pretty specific about the bathroom and kitchen tile grout. We wanted white grout on the walls and black grout to match the floor tiles. You know… all light, all dark.  You know what those lazy suckers did?

Yeah, they used light grey for everything. Fuck!

All of the sudden I was overwhelmed by this ugly grey grout. “No, no, no” I was saying. “This is not what we ordered.”

I went back and checked the shower, which of course was the same. Why didn’t either of us notice this when we visited the flat a couple weeks before? Re-doing the grout is a huge pain requiring lots of work for them to rip out all the tiles and redo properly. I really would have liked to inform them of their mistake as soon as possible.

Grey, grey, everywhere. Make it go away!

We actually wrote them several times about the grout color, called them on the phone and then Kay even went in person to the bloody tile appointment IN the flat to discuss which color goes where and how they lay it. We literally could not have done anything else other than to grout it ourselves (which wasn’t really allowed.) And they still screwed up.

Grrrrrrrrrrr. I took one more look at our problem and left.

We had a couple issues to deal with after our pre-acceptance, with the top three issues being our main problems.

1. Grout color wrong in all tiles (we hope to have them install the kitchen ones properly!)

2. Threshold from bathroom to bedroom or hallway is not even. Larger on one side than the other (measured with coins). Fixing this would also require them to completely redo the floor to make it even.

3. Wood molding: Crappy installation

4. Tiles not installed in kitchen yet

5. Some cracks and spots on walls here and there

6. Trash can cabinet not trimmed yet

7. The spots in the hallway were on but you could not turn them off. That might be because the electricity wasn’t turned on properly to the house yet.

8. Plumbing/Electricity/Air ducts all need to be turned on and checked

9. Balcony needs to be finished

10. Soap dispenser in kitchen needs installed.

11. Soap dispenser needs to be installed

12. Wardrobe socket needs to be installed

That was about it! The company would have eight weeks to fix all these problems and finish the flat before we move out of ours. If they don’t do it on time, they’ll have to pay for a hotel for us, so I’m sure they are itching to get done quickly!

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Neubau Progress: VIII

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After Kay’s visit with the tile guy at the beginning of February, we waited a long time until we went to the flat again.

We never received updated bathroom plans and many of the details were wrong or outdated, so by March I was starting to worry about where I would reach for my toilet paper while sat on my throne. Like, lay awake at night and worry how hard it will be to reach the loo paper kind of worrying.

Luckily Kay called and was able to set up an appointment at the end of April to come be super anal and decide exactly where my toilet paper holder goes among other things. I was very excited to see the flat for the first time since installing the floors, tiles, kitchen cabinets… practically everything!

Guest bathroom.

No doors in the shower yet, but it was exciting to see our bathroom cabinet there. Yes, I opened it to test it out. 🙂

Guest bedroom:

Not much changed in here. The floors were all covered up with paper to protect them.

The fuse box in the hallway.

The reduit (pantry) where you can see the uncovered, albeit, dirty wood floors. Looks like we’ll have cleaning to do when we move in!

From the living room out onto the balcony where we saw they are now installing our tiles.

Kay surveys the living room… checking out that kitchen hole again!

Sockets were in, but not mounted.

Some things like the temperature control were already installed though. This is in the kitchen, right where I sort of wanted to put a bar table. I guess it won’t really work if there’s a light switch in the way. :/

And our beloved kitchen hole. Still there. (Not impressed.)

At this point, Kay alerted the local fire brigade about the problem so they could come in and check it out. The contractor promised it will still be fixed, but I was happy knowing that a third party was checking it out. They had better fix it!

But how exciting, our kitchen!

The floor was not in yet, nor the tiles on the walls… but I was very happy to see the new granite and white cabinets. 🙂

And of course, our new fancy sink! Looking good! I’m almost excited to wash large pans in here.

Trash system not installed below the sink yet:

Our kitchen drawers. Squee!

And a view to the balcony with our tiles coming along. We didn’t get to choose the outside tiles, but I think they’ll be just fine.

Another of the living/dining room from the other side.

Temperature controls in the living room:

Our bedroom:

We also found that they had installed the hallway closets, but there was this weird gap in the wall where our outlet is. We need access to the outlet from the closet because Kay plans on sticking all our routers and internet stuff in there, so if they don’t sort out this problem, we’ve spend hundreds on a worthless outlet!

(To the left you see the outlet hole and to the right is the side of the built-in-wardrobe…)

And inside the wardrobes I was surprised to see shelves and rods!

Yay, storage! I’m going to enjoy it, because we sure as heck aren’t going to have wardrobes in our bedroom when we move in. I’ll have to wait for those… 🙁

Whelp, at this point I got distracted by talking with the worker about where exactly to install our bathroom components, so I didn’t actually take any pictures of that. But rest assured, we put everything in sensible places. I decided not to have the toilet paper roll mounted on the wall behind the toilet because that drives me nuts, so we’ll either glue it to the side of the bathroom cabinet or use a freestanding toilet paper holder.

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Neubau Progress: VII

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I was really worried that after January, we wouldn’t be able to see our flat again until it finished in May, but in February, Kay visited the flat for an appointment with the tile guys in the bathroom.

He noticed that in addition to the big hole we found in the kitchen, they had also drilled further into the hole outside the kitchen door. Not impressed.

Kay met with the tile guys and told them which direction we wanted the tiles to go. We also decided that since they fit perfectly on the ledge, we would use the black floor tiles on the bathroom ledge above the sink as well.

Kay sent me pictures of how the tiles would be direction-wise and he explained to me that they would be setup subway style as opposed to straight grid lines.

Kay also asked me on the phone if I was really sure I wanted white grouting on the walls, because it would cost more. Yep. I want white, white, white so I can see any dirt or grout on my bathroom walls. I think we can spare the minimal cost of upgrading here.

We also specified that we wanted the darkest grout available for the floor to match the floor tiles. My mother always had a hard time keeping the light grout in her kitchen tiles clean so I definitely didn’t want that to be an issue for us.

The rest of the flat was still kind of a crazy mess. Since they drilled the utility shaft so late, everything was a bit behind in the kitchen installation. We were also exchanging our steamer to upgrade some more, at a special, extra additional cost on us… but whatever. I was going to get my temperature controls!

Kay also snapped a photo of our curtain rails.

Small details like this are something that the company sort of glossed over, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if we have to pay to install something ourselves or if it comes standard with the flat. I was happy to see them installed.

As you can see, they are the standard double curtain rail in Switzerland. We don’t normally have fancy curtain rods, but instead these minimalistic flush curtain rails with a track for sheer privacy curtains and another for heavier blackout curtains.

Our fuse box was still a hot mess.

Here they’d already marked on the floor which direction the tiles would be laid.

And since he was there, Kay went down to the floor below ours and checked our our kitchen hole from below.

Argh, just what are they doing in the kitchen?

I think this is the flat below ours where you can see they unfortunately had already installed the kitchen cabinets when they realized they’d forgotten the utility shaft.

Well well, no point stressing when there’s nothing we can do. We just had to wait and hope they patch it all up correctly… At least our tiles will be the right color and grouting after asking three times and going to this appointment!

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Neubau Progress: VI

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When we got back from the States after Christmas and New Year, we tried to visit the flat that first weekend only to find out they had finally locked our building with semi-permanent doors. Oh noes! How would we see progress after this point??

Well… are sneaky. We headed back the second weekend in January with the plan of climbing the scaffolding to our balcony. From there we could still enter our flat via the balcony doors, but it was likely that it would be one of the last times we could freely enter the flat on the weekend during construction.

We noticed several holes this time… like this disturbing cutout near the entrance to the kitchen. What are they doing in there??

And this even scarier hole in the ceiling and floor of the kitchen. It looked like they had completely forgotten to build in a utilities shaft in the kitchen in 3 different apartment layouts through all five floors! They only found out their huge mistake when they started installing the kitchen cabinets and appliances in other flats and realized something was missing. Ridiculous!!!

Thankfully we are one of the last flats to be finished so they had delivered our kitchen cabinets and appliances but they hadn’t started installing them yet. To cut through the concrete they need to do it with water, and if you already have your appliances with their electric parts installed, this can only spell big trouble later on. The whole ordeal was really disconcerting.

But hey… look who finally remembered our extra sockets in the kitchen??

As you can see, the delivery of the cabinets and appliances is why all the flats are locked now, which I can’t say bothers me. I don’t want anyone stealing my oven!

Not much changed in the bathrooms since we last visited.

Not much changed in the bedrooms either…

Our bathtub did seem to have more crap dumped in it though. It looked like they were preparing to install the toilets.

Here in the master bath you can see the hot and cold water taps in our double sink as well as the piping for the sink drain. The where the mirror will be mounted will also have a little ledge behind the sink area.

From the bathroom looking to the french balcony…

The only thing really scary was that giant hole they drilled through all the apartment floors. What kind of company forgets to put a utilities shaft in? That’s a pretty big mistake. Below you can see the texture from drilling with the water jets.

Hello down there! (That’ll be office/business space below.) Let’s hope they close that up properly!

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