A day of dumb
| 4 min read
The day started alright, I almost overslept for an appointment. Fortunately the guy who would come is always late, so whatever. And as expected, 3 hours later he finally showed up. So you see, I didn't oversleep at all.
While waiting I ransacked Home Depot once more for some small bits and pieces and went a got groceries and the final main 40A breaker for the apartment building. Yep, I can finally re-do the meter boxes and put the correct breakers in there. About time too, because the staff at the electrical supplies store start giving me strange looks why I keep buying more and more breakers every few weeks - I must've bought 30+ of various sizes by now.
Anyway once the contractor finally showed up, things went downhill fast. The idea was that he would come to fix the base, or plateau, for the new water heater he installed 2 weeks ago. The material cracked and needed reinforcing. So he would come today to replace the plateau he made last time with a more sturdy steel one.
All well and good, but when I got back from home depot he was walking on the street with a piece of flexible hose, not required for the fix. Turns out he drilled a hole in the hot water pipe in the wall. The fix being installing a piece of hose with some clamps and cement over it.
Alright, he's the plumber, he knows what he's doing. Not so much... It turns out. As soon as the water turned on the ugly piece of hose leaked on both clamps. And, worse, he also didn't account for the cinderblock wall strength and within 30 minutes the bolts ripped out of the wall and we could barely catch the heater and drain the 76 Liters (40-ish gallons) of water out of it.
Now the weak wall is not his fault, but him not thinking to anchor the bolts properly is. And with the overall poor decision making, me and my mom suddenly lost all confidence in the contractor and decided to take charge for what to fix and how. So from my tall hat (toolbox) I pulled 2 pipe connectors and a piece of pipe, along with glue and told him to use that to fix the piping. And for the shelf of the heater, I decided that we're going to build a reinforced cinderblock cabinet kind of thing. The heater can sit on top, some wood shelves will be below it for gardening supplies. And with that idea, the whole weight of the heater sits on the ground and is not hanging of off the cinderblock wall.
And while that was going on we sort of got raided by a team of 3 city hall building inspectors, because of the unfinished construction permit nonsense from the previous owners. The construction company we work with submitted a whole file for them to rubberstamp the end of construction. So that we can apply for a new permit.
These idiots barely identified themselves and looked like a bunch of thugs with an air like they owned the place. They took photos of the outside of the apartment building. And, along with the gazillion documents and pointless forms they already have, they wanted even more useless paperwork. We told them to talk to the construction company and suddenly everything was "bien" and "no problemo" and they left within 10 minutes.
sigh
Shortly after I was juggling another appointment with another contractor who was supposed to install new doors in apartment 2 and the main house. Of-course this guy was also way late. But when they finally showed up things went relatively smooth and as far as we can tell he did a nice job and we now have 4 excellent looking doors - With keys!
yay! \o/
The tyranny of government, I hate it. Overbearing, slow, annoying and stupid. Endless, utterly pointless and convoluted systems that barely work and do not achieve anything. Nobody cares for what it does, or why, but for some reason everyone still has the need to execute the whole process, rubberstamp and delay everything for weeks or months. Only to (probably) promptly loose the paperwork in the chaos they create.
And then there is the lax and lazy and incompetence of contractors that either don't show up, deliver shitty work, or are overpriced morons. Often a combination of two or more of these.
I wonder what nonsense and frustrations the construction company will throw at us once I finally sign some sort of agreement with them, or make the first payment.