That’s the sound of money being squandered on what might be considered unnecessary work to the house but which in my head, is deemed justifiable.
I’m paying to have the rear dormer refurbished. Why? For a number of reasons that largely include water pooling on the sagging flat roof, lack of guttering, zero insulation, flimsy cladding and all the aesthetic appeal of a rotting cucumber.
When the developers originally built our house, they must have just plonked on any old dormer with no thought given whatsoever to its design or functionality. I mean just look at it. It's hideous.
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| Dreadful dormer |
Three windows haphazardly spaced across the front instead of being nicely grouped to give a more pleasing external appearance. In the ideal world, I would prefer to have a dormer with a pitched roof or one with windows spaced out like this one:
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| What I wish I had instead |
However, not being as rich as Rockefeller, I don’t have the cash to completely demolish the existing structure and start again. Plus, a pitched roof would require formal planning permission/building regs approval thus adding even more to the bill so I’m having to make do with a few cosmetic tweaks instead. New timbers, lots of insulation, guttering and the awful white plastic cladding replaced with darker roofing tiles.
Unfortunately, nothing can be done about the positioning of the windows much to my displeasure as this is classed as a structural alteration. Got to live with what you’ve got. And at around £5K for cosmetic tweaks, there would be more bang for my buck splashing out on dermal fillers to sort out my jowly chops.
Still, it’s post Bank Holiday, the builder blokes are here ripping off the roof of the rear dormer window, a structure that I’ve been informed has been royally bodged left, right and centre by all accounts.
‘Was the rubber roof on your dormer there when you bought the house?’ the dirt-covered dude asked smiling rakishly.
‘Yes’ I tentatively replied ‘we’ve not meddled with either of the dormers’ at the same time wondering where this conversation was going and whether it would end in a hefty increase to the quoted cost.
With almost great glee, the handy bloke informed me that the rubber roof we had on our dormer had been plonked on top of the old felt one or rather three previous felt ones. It also transpired that the original roof had been constructed on timbers that were not the right height, had not been insulated and at least two of the three layers of felt hadn’t been properly stuck down. Anything else?
I was assured that all of these shenanigans could be magically rectified but I would have a lot more rubbish to take to the tip. Phew! Is that all?
Rubbish – now there’s a popular topic de jour. To get round the requirement of paying to dump commercial waste, it seems the trades are now foisting disposal of any work-related rubbish onto their customers. It was emphatically pointed out at the quote stage of this project that dumping was my responsibility and not theirs.
Okay. I get it. You want me to hump everything down to the local recycling centre so you won’t have to pay for trade waste. Not a problem if I thought I'd be getting my work done cheaper as a result but I think its more a case of they don't want the hassle of having to deal with waste removal.
Something else to factor in if you are getting work done because if you haven’t got a local tip near you then it might mean having to shell out for a skip and these aren’t cheap. Judging by this little lot, it’s going to be multiple trips to the tip!
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| Rubbish removal? That's your job missus |
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