The last drop in the full glass
This is the story of how I realized that Do It Yourself is the only feasible way to move forward in any project. And, by that I mean, the only true way to fulfill the building plan, to keep within the budget, to achieve the deadlines set, and to avoid a tsunami of stress for no good reason.
As soon as we acquired the land plot, before we even had a date for the construction, we got well acquainted with the lack of respect for contracts and agreements, the widespread dishonesty, the shameless price schemes and the outright incompetency of handyman and contractors. At that time, we just thought these were isolated cases, perpetrated by firms that took advantage of new property owners, carried out by people who probably weren’t serious business anyway. We couldn’t be more wrong!
Not only this was the absolutely norm everywhere, it had become “normal”. When I commented about it, people would reply “Yes, that’s how it is”. People had accepted they were going to be cheated by contractors, left hanging on deadlines and had to pay extra for a bad service and, most of the time, very unsatisfactory results.
What happened?
It was time to connect the electric power and water to the house. Without these, the other crews couldn’t do the rest of the work. What work, you ask? The house so far was only a shell, needing warmth and wall finishing, requiring toilets connected to waste water lines, paint and proper floors, lights and a telephone connection. Everything started with finding the utilities at the border of the property with the street.
We had used excavators before, we had moved tons and tons of material on the driveway with it. But we were afraid, like all normal new homeowners, that we would do a mistake on this so very important step of the construction, because (of course) we never did anything like this before. Mathias knew someone who had done it: he was a handyman he knew his whole life. Naturally, we asked him how much it would cost us. He told us that a total of 2.000 Euros and a week would be enough. Without any options, pressed by building deadlines and running low on money, we took the offer, believing that because we knew him, the deal was safe. Oh, what a mistake!
The handyman came by and the first signs of dishonesty started, although at that time we did not think of them as red flags. He insisted in buying the necessary material himself and bring it too, be that the pipes, the pipe connectors or the sand. Later we realized we had no way to measure how much or how many of what he was bringing. He wouldn’t even show the invoices to us, shamelessly hiding the real costs. On top of it, he would charge us high costs for every time he drove to us with a few sacks of sand or pipes.
Unreliable, incompetent and untrustworthy service
After making our property a mess of soil and material, to a point where nobody could drive anymore to our property, the handyman said his excavator broke down and he couldn’t continue laying the pipes. Please notice that, laying the pipes inside the ditches didn’t require at all the excavator. But he didn’t come back anymore and we didn’t know when he would.
In meanwhile, the different crews had exact appointments that couldn’t be missed, as they are booked the whole year. The building firm made pressure on us with good reason. This was another lesson we learned: avoid building companies that leave the house owner to deal with the criminal contractors! Get a prefabricated house company that offers you a complete package, so you don’t have to deal with them, negotiate their overinflated prices (about which you won’t be aware of until it’s too late) and run after irresponsible handymen who won’t pick up the phone for weeks!
So now we were anyway left alone with the mess, with unfinished work and angry crews who couldn’t drive to the house with their equipment. Mathias had been helping the whole pipe process outside and he realized that it was quite easy, and that we could have done by ourselves. We had no choice but to get the work completed without any help.
The first forced DIY
This was NOT the first time that a contractor abandoned us in in the middle of a construction site and simply disappeared, despite promising and shaking hands on a fixed date and being well aware that we would lose big money on dependent contracts if the dates were not respected. The last time that happened, two contractors disappeared and we were about to lose the time window to build the house’s foundation and concrete slab. That meant a delay of five months to deliver the house, in other words: living on rent for another 5 months while already paying interest on the bank credit.
Naturally, we were desperate and we knocked on every door. I probably don’t need to explain how they took advantage of it… The only contractor that came cheated us on 10.000 Euros over the agreed price. We also had to build the garage foundation by ourselves every night in the dark and freezing temps. Again, we had no choice, as no one else would do it.
The DIY that changed everything
We brought the empty pipes from the street until the house and used big angles to facilitate future cables being driven inside without issues over the bends. The pipes were empty until the cables and hoses from the street could be inserted through them by a city engineer. Some could only be done when the whole neighborhood was informed about the outage of a few hours, during which the process would be completed. We only needed to be sure that once the engineer was there, the empty pipes were properly buried, in place and connected to the buildings (house and garage).
It was not difficult to do it, but it was extensive and we needed to care for maintaining a slope in case of water disposal pipes (the green ones). We laid the pipes and labeled them inside the house. When possible, we left a nylon line from beginning to end, in order to help pulling thick hoses or cables through the corners. It proved to be useful later on.
It took us a couple of days working inside the ditches, removing stones, creating a sand bed for the pipes, cutting and connecting them, labeling everything inside and making sure that everything was well covered and protected before harsh soil and material could fill back the ditches.
The aftermath
After two weeks, when all connections were complete, the handyman came back from whatever he was doing somewhere else and closed the trenches with the excavator. Not only Mathias helped half of all the first phase of the work, we completed the rest by ourselves. However, he declared that the activities were more than agreed anyway, that he spent more money on material than he expected and many more hours than planned. Under these lame excuses, he demanded 4.000 Euros for his trouble.
We were naive and inexperienced on the fraudulent schemes of contractors like him. We knew he was lying, but when he failed to show invoices and demanded immediate payment, we didn’t know what to do, so we ended up paying. It was a terrible lesson about trusting contractors (in this case, someone we knew), thinking they would have a minimum of professionalism. In fact, such type of workers realized from the beginning that homeowners are on their hands and have no choice, so they do and charge what they want without any consequence.
No contractors ever again!!
So I vowed there and then never again to hire and depend on contractors. No matter what needs to done, if we are allowed to do it legally, I’ll give many shots till I get it right. And I know that, at the end, I will get better results, the way I want and need, for less money and right on time!
Now you know how House & Mods was born. 😉 From then on, the journey has been a most satisfying and rewarding story of hard work, passion for beauty and true joy over realized dreams.
