When the bill to start the impending renovation of our 20 year old building was passed by the 'Residents' Legislature', we were ecstatic. Our building would finally look like a friendly residential complex, and not resemble a century-old haunted Mansion.
With the long process of drawing up a budget, finding contractors and forming a 'renovation committee' underway, one could reasonably expect this whole renovation saga to be over by the dawn of the next year, and after a year, our building looked squeaking clean and new, from the outside.
Due to a need to change the 'plumbing pipes of the whole building', all the inhabitants were informed that they would have workers breaking walls and repairing the pipes inside their personal bathrooms for 'over a month'. With an erratic working schedule, more often then not, a worker would show up at our doorstep in the midst of our night snack, or at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. It was truly maddening to deal with.
On a fateful Friday, when we were expecting guests for dinner, the workers showed up at noon and started 'working on the bathroom'. Even though we had made it quite clear that we would require the bathroom to be made usable by 5 that evening, they lodged off to get lunch at about 2, and didn't show up until 7 that night. And in the midst of their absence, a valve, connected to the main pipe of the washroom, was 'accidently' left open, and this caused the whole pipe to burst, and flood our modest three-bedroom apartment.
We were not left with only a dirty washroom, but a damp, smelly, 'water-filled' house, which was soaked in a 2 inch deep. It was a battle to stop the leaking pipe. While we used our 'jugaadu buddhi' to improvise ways to lessen the force of the incoming water, the contractor was frantically called. It was a quarter of an hour before the blast of water could be stopped, and it took us another couple of hours of labour to get our apartment devoid to dirty water.
We were offered no help. We started to manually sweep out water, with the help of broomsticks and a cloth. We even had to request our guests to NOT grace us with their presence that evening owing to 'truly unforeseen circumstances'.
No words of apology, let alone compensation for the amount of wooden furniture the pseudo-flood had destroyed, were offered. Even though this behavior was far from professional, we dismissed this episode, and thought it to be a genuine mistake.
The bathrooms of several residents were left in an unusable state, and many bathrooms were 'wrecked beyond repairs'. They smashed the side of our bathroom to access the pipes behind, dislodging several tiles, and after months of work, simply plastered the wall with dirty black coloured 'coal'. Taking in account that we had 'refurnished' these bathrooms a couple of years ago and had no intention to partake in that activity again for the next couple of years, the state they had left our 'finished bathroom' was more than disappointing.
The contractor's fee was hefty in itself, but the incident expenses we had to borne due to his negligence seriously mounted up. Though our contractor had lived up to his word and made our building 'a joy to look at', but had simultaneously succeeded in making it 'a wreck to live in'.
With the long process of drawing up a budget, finding contractors and forming a 'renovation committee' underway, one could reasonably expect this whole renovation saga to be over by the dawn of the next year, and after a year, our building looked squeaking clean and new, from the outside.
Due to a need to change the 'plumbing pipes of the whole building', all the inhabitants were informed that they would have workers breaking walls and repairing the pipes inside their personal bathrooms for 'over a month'. With an erratic working schedule, more often then not, a worker would show up at our doorstep in the midst of our night snack, or at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. It was truly maddening to deal with.
On a fateful Friday, when we were expecting guests for dinner, the workers showed up at noon and started 'working on the bathroom'. Even though we had made it quite clear that we would require the bathroom to be made usable by 5 that evening, they lodged off to get lunch at about 2, and didn't show up until 7 that night. And in the midst of their absence, a valve, connected to the main pipe of the washroom, was 'accidently' left open, and this caused the whole pipe to burst, and flood our modest three-bedroom apartment.
We were not left with only a dirty washroom, but a damp, smelly, 'water-filled' house, which was soaked in a 2 inch deep. It was a battle to stop the leaking pipe. While we used our 'jugaadu buddhi' to improvise ways to lessen the force of the incoming water, the contractor was frantically called. It was a quarter of an hour before the blast of water could be stopped, and it took us another couple of hours of labour to get our apartment devoid to dirty water.
We were offered no help. We started to manually sweep out water, with the help of broomsticks and a cloth. We even had to request our guests to NOT grace us with their presence that evening owing to 'truly unforeseen circumstances'.
No words of apology, let alone compensation for the amount of wooden furniture the pseudo-flood had destroyed, were offered. Even though this behavior was far from professional, we dismissed this episode, and thought it to be a genuine mistake.
The bathrooms of several residents were left in an unusable state, and many bathrooms were 'wrecked beyond repairs'. They smashed the side of our bathroom to access the pipes behind, dislodging several tiles, and after months of work, simply plastered the wall with dirty black coloured 'coal'. Taking in account that we had 'refurnished' these bathrooms a couple of years ago and had no intention to partake in that activity again for the next couple of years, the state they had left our 'finished bathroom' was more than disappointing.
The contractor's fee was hefty in itself, but the incident expenses we had to borne due to his negligence seriously mounted up. Though our contractor had lived up to his word and made our building 'a joy to look at', but had simultaneously succeeded in making it 'a wreck to live in'.
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