Moving Forward - 2

My excellent Surveyor came today. There is no subsidence anywhere round my front door. Phew! The minor cracks above the doorway are not serious & can be left. If I wanted to I could get them re-mortared with lime mortar, but it's a specialist job. Massive relief. The doorway should have been templated & 3 horizontal measurements should have been taken. It should be possible to make a frame which fits the space as well as the original, which was a cheap wooden one, without an increasing gap at the side. So thank goodness it isn't my problem to solve. But it is very frustrating.

Now all I have to do is wait patiently for the suppliers & the fabricators to agree what they are going to do about this & make a door & frame that fits. 

I don't imagine that's going to happen quickly given my experience over this last year, but at least I'm secure & draught proof. It is ironic that both my front door & side door have been wrong & have to be replaced. They are from 2 different companies. It doesn't say much for the UK double glazing industry.

In the meantime my hallway will have to stay unfinished until the new door & frame arrives. Goodness knows how long that will be.

Moving forward

Today is momentous. Finally, 8 months after ordering, my front door has arrived & is being installed.

The delays in the supply chain for the building trade are notorious & I have blogged about them several times. It was bad enough when I wasn't living here, but not having a proper front door when I was has been a trial. 

I am delighted with the door & the men fitting it seem very good. I will be so pleased to feel completely secure & finally the internal work in my house will be almost finished when the hallway is done. I actually started planning where to hang my pictures with my daughter yesterday. So it will really begin to feel like a home rather than a building site. Most of my pictures have important memories. 

All the exterior work is on hold though, possibly for a long time. A neighbours wall at the bottom of the garden is leaning into my garden & needs to be demolished & replaced. It will be a big job & cause a lot of disruption because I have offered that all the work can be done from my side because access is much easier than from hers. So I can't have my drive, security gates, patio & garden done till the work is finished. All the men, machinery & materials will have to come in & out through my entrance. That can't happen until the Surveyor has done his report though. It's a pity, because I do want to get on with my garden, which looks dreadful at the moment.

Even as I'm writing this I have just been told that there is a problem with the door frame! The arch has been wrongly constructed. My doorway has a flat arch & the frame has a true arch. So it won't fit properly. They will install it temporarily & fill the gaps & get another frame made. Also the inside of the door should be cream & they have done it in Chartwell Green, which is the outside colour & looks very odd from the hall. So that means another door

Unfortunately I'm not even surprised. It's par for the course. Nothing has gone well.

UPDATE 4 pm

Just when you think nothing worse can happen! The window & door company founder came to see the problems with the door & frame & noticed something that I certainly didn't. But worse, my surveyor & none of my builders noticed either. The side wall of the house isn't level & there are signs of cracking on the front wall above the doorway. My skill set doesn't stretch this far, so I have emailed my surveyor. (This does prove that a - You do need a good survey & b - Even that doesn't necessarily stop you from getting a nasty shock).

I will wait with baited breath.

If there is a serious problem it does make you wonder what the point of employing professionals is. Because it certainly doesn't seem to protect house buyers from having to go through this sort of truly worrying scenario. The side wall of my neighbours detached house is covered in cracks, so maybe I don't need to be too worried. But that isn't helping me at the moment.

The goodness of Human Nature

Very little over the past year has encouraged me to reflect well on this subject. On the contrary, I have been let down time & again & it has become routine to almost expect it.The building trade in general doesn't seem to think that effective, timely, communication or consideration for others & their property is important. I think quite a bit is to do with men dealing with women, especially older, single, women. Then there is the minefield of boundary disputes with neighbours which is very revealing.

However yesterday gave me hope for humanity. I went to help out in a local church that is running TEFL English lessons & Maths lessons for refugees. It was so uplifting to work with someone who gives her own time, spends her own money on materials & produces brilliant visual aids. Some people are just so selfless & empathetic it really does restore your faith in goodness & generosity. 

The refugees varied in age from 5 to 40ish & they were wonderful too. I have no idea what trauma they have gone through. They are all Ukranians, so it can't be good. But they all want to integrate & learn to speak English. They want to make a life here, even if it is only temporary. I imagine most want to return home when this devastating war is over. Many are already doing so. Some of the children are obviously traumatised. Some of the women still have husbands & family in Ukraine. Many are very intelligent & have skills.

They are so eager to learn. I particularly admire the adults. I can't envisage what it must be like to be uprooted from everything you know & have to learn a new language after such trauma. I'm sure I wouldn't find it easy.

More than 14 million Ukranians have fled. The UK has accepted more than 53,000. Poland has accepted over 3million. We have only accepted 20,000 Syrian refugees. Turkey accepted 3,685,839 Syrians. We do not have a good record of generosity to refugees & migrants.

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/the-truth-about-asylum/

New legislation to "deal" with refugees is going through Parliament sending them to offshore "processing centres"

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/fight-the-governments-anti-refugee-bill/

There is a concern that we are adopting double standards to refugees from different countries.

https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/ukraine-crisis-double-standards-has-europe-s-response-refugees-changed

I leave you to do your own research & decide. In the meantime very ordinary people are doing very extraordinary things despite Political posturing. They make a real difference to people who need our help.

 

System Failure 2

I have had to threaten 2 companies with issuing a summons through the County Court for failure to supply goods of a satisfactory quality in a timely way. Both sell double glazing windows & doors. 

The company who supplied the sliding sash windows for the original 1930's house have to replace some fittings which don't match, fitted with some rusty screws. The windows were installed & left filthy inside & out, frames & glass, with labels on which I can't remove & no keys to a couple of casement windows. Some windows were not properly sealed on the outside. They are on the second design for my front door which was ordered & paid for in September last year. My original front door is not draught proof or fit for purpose. The work on the hall can't be finished until the door is fitted.

The company who supplied the windows & doors for the new extension have fitted a side door which is the wrong colour inside & doesn't match the frame or their other windows. The windows had the wrong colour trickle vents which haven't been replaced & no keys. I have non matching handles on the windows & doors, some white, some cream. The company was paid to supply & install everything, but they didn't install the door. The frame for the door is damaged because the hinges were put in the wrong place & holes were left. The exterior frame was never sealed.

A Quality Control inspector is coming from the company I bought my kitchen from this week because of issues with chipping paintwork & an extractor fan cupboard which bowed because it wasn't strong enough. I had already had an issue with the wrong configuration of the oven housing cupboard.

I could go on. The number of trouble free transactions during this build could be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have spent hours, days, weeks & months chasing suppliers, who often don't respond. British manufacturing & supply is in a dreadful state. The building trade has always had a bad reputation, but it is now totally unfit for purpose. 

I actually don't blame the suppliers. It's the fabricators who are the problem. It is mostly down to the supply chain - difficulties sourcing materials & also a lack of a skilled workforce. The suppliers have justifiably irate customers on one hand & fabricators who seemingly don't give a toss, because they don't have to deal with the customer.

The customer is relatively powerless, at the mercy of companies who simply ignore the problem & bullshit & bluster their way through this mess. The customer is left just wanting the agony to stop & their build to be finished to a good standard & the builders to move on to some other poor client.

The building trade needs a good shake up. If Northern European countries can do it, why can't the UK? There needs to be proper quality control of both goods & tradespeople. The customer needs protection & enforcement of reasonable standards. Big builders have huge power & make huge profits. They are very effective at lobbying government, who do little or nothing to protect individuals like me who renovate old property.

My house will be very well insulated & fit for climate change. I have not had any financial support to do that. I won't live long enough to recoup the money. If I had known just how bad the building trade is I would never have started this because the mental & physical toll on me at 77 has been enormous.

It shouldn't be like this. What incentive is there for property owners to renovate old property. A conservative estimate is that 25 million homes in the UK need insulation.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/292265/insulation-in-dwellings-in-england-uk-y-on-y/

Chronic Pain

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61309962

26% of adults in the UK live with chronic pain - tick

24% of those take opiods - tick

I have had a lifetime of chronic pain. I have tried every prescription medication from opiods down. I have tried almost every alternative therapy.

I have had doctors who had no idea how to treat me & told me that "I was creating my own pain" and doctors who were patient, sympathetic, open minded & honest. Chronic pain is very difficult to treat. It's only relatively recently that conditions like Fibromyalgia & CFS have become accepted as mainstream. 

https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/chronic-pain/

Thank goodness we are starting to get more research into pain, it's causes & treatment. 

My experience leads me to think that the causes of chronic pain are multi factorial:-

• Environment - I think we live in a toxic world. Air quality is poor. Agribusiness & industry pollute our rivers & waterways. We eat too much processed food. What we allow into our bodies is not good for them.
• Exercise - Most of us don't do enough. Use it or loose it. Around 1 in 3 (34%) of men and 1 in 2 (42%) of women are not active enough for good health.
• Serotonin carries messages between nerve cells in the brain and throughout your body. It plays a key role in such body functions as mood, sleep, digestion, nausea, wound healing, bone health, blood clotting and sexual desire. Lack of Seratonin is caused by:-
  
  • age-related health and brain changes
  • a poor diet
  • chronic stress
  • a lack of exposure to natural light
  • inadequate exercise levels
• Sleep - 36% of UK adults struggle to get to sleep at least on a weekly basis. Almost 1 in 5 have trouble falling asleep every single night. Nearly half of the UK have trouble falling asleep at least once a month.  https://www.formulatehealth.com/blog/insomnia-statistics-uk-how-many-people-have-sleep-problems. Sleep deprivation & fatige is often caused by chronic pain.
  
• Neurological pain - Fibromyalgia is a chronic and widespread musculoskeletal pain and fatigue disorder. It is a long-term, body-wide pain in muscles, ligaments and tendons – the soft fibrous tissues in the body.It is a disorder of the central nervous system. A growing amount of evidence suggests that the pain in Ostoarthritis also has a neuropathic component in some patients. It is often the result of nerve damage or a malfunctioning nervous system.

For sufferers of chronic pain there probably is no cure. But you can manage your life & pain. You need to take responsibility for your own body, treat your doctors as partners not Gods, be pro-active, pace yourself, use distraction technique....Above all enjoy the life you have.