Bent

As in bent out of shape, bent wall, or just plain bent.

Met with the builders and the Fletchers/EQR guy at lunch. Very interesting, and why this meeting didn't happen 3 weeks ago, who knows!

Anyway. Wooden floor, well it's "cupped" and that's supposedly water damage, not the result of the work they have done. Who knows. We'll let that one go.

Foundations. They met the Fletchers standard, "I'm happy with that repair". Which if he thought about it, doesn't meet the building code. Never mind, the builders are adding the additional fastening, after I (my Dad) sent them the building standard.

Walls and paint job. Much inspection. One wall, decision to remove gib and replace. Then replaster and repaint. Knowing of course that the carpet cleaner was arriving at 1pm and the movers are booked for tomorrow. Needless to say, both got cancelled.

Then numerous other walls, nails popped and gib not fastened properly, requiring refastening, replastering, and repainting. And interestingly, many of these walls were supposed to be regibbed, but "the decorators" decided it wasn't required. And then, the Fletchers guy asked if there was a negative scope (i.e cost reduction submitted). A delayed, "No, not yet, we'll do that at the end." Riiiight, you'll take the money, says the cynical side of me.

Bottom line, they started work straight away. Ripped the gib off, repair effected, replastering in the morning, and repainting in the afternoon. Carpets go back down late Thursday. Cleaners and carpet cleaners in afterwards, and then on Friday afternoon a tentative booking for the movers (they are busy).

Come hell or high water we'll be back in the house Friday, even camping on the floor, as our friends are moving into our (their) new house (where we are staying, Friday.

Lessons for Christchurch people?
1. If you don't think the project has a great deal of structural damage, you're probably better to take option 3. Take the payout and then manage the project yourself. It's not hard, and if you're a mum, you do it everyday with your kids.
2. Fletchers are not interested one iota in doing anything other than "repairing earthquake damage". So if you have a wall that is damaged, they will repair the bits that are clearly EQ related, but paint over the other parts, even if that's just 10 mins more work. You need to manage the project yourself to remedy this. Remove Fletchers if at all possible.
3. Fletchers and the Tradies are interested in doing the least cost, fastest possible job. I understand why, money is tight. But, that's very short term thinking. We'd easily have paid 5 or 10K over the repair for the "right job" to have been done. Otherwise, in the next EQ, we'll be back at square 1. That's just stupid.
4. Project management, in our experience, is non-existent. If I hadn't been so involved, we would have had a half arsed repair and still not been close to being in
5. Tradies and Fletchers are full of shit and you'll get different stories from each and every one of them. Trust no one. Some big egos out there.

And I could go on. At the end of the day, if my Dad wasn't an engineer, and I wasn't so picky, we'd have got a half-backed job. No question. Which is bloody disappointing, a waste of money, and a huge future problem. Sadly I fear that many repairs are of this standard or less. That's very very sad.