Home Farm, the property we purchased, was flipped by a couple that have been doing this professionally for 30 years. We’ve been living here for 18 months, and we can’t get over the disgraceful building practice that they considered normal.
The amount of corners they have cut is astonishing, but one can arguably put that down to business practice. What we can’t get our heads around though, is that they thought it was normal to hide and stash building refuse, packaging and offcuts in every imaginable crevice that was hidden and out of sight.
What really gets to me is that the previous owners, the flippers, bragged to us that they did all the renovation work and didn’t need a skip to deal with the trash. They actually bragged about this. As we’ve started to peel aspects of the house back, as one does over time, we can see why they didn’t bother with a skip.
It all started last summer when we did work on the two guest bathrooms. When we removed the paneling around the baths, all the packaging and waste from the installation was hidden behind the panels. Bags full of the stuff.
When we recently undertook work to gut and refit our master bathroom, we encountered the same thing there.
But nothing could prepare us for what awaited in the loft. Every single last bit of packaging, offcuts and insulation was dumped in the loft as far as the eye can see. There’s a mountain of the stuff; no exaggeration.
What makes it even more reprehensible is that it has all been dumped on top of the cabling that leads to various parts of the house, and we can’t get in there to run cables to the new spotlights in the master bathroom because there’s just too much rubbish to navigate around.
So we’ve had to put that wiring on hold and figure out a way to get this rubbish out. The loft access is through a small tight hatch, so this is going to be a massive task. It’s just disgusting.
Bonus disgraceful building practice example
We had to change a tap in our studio because it wasn’t allowing water to flow smoothly. It all made sense when we finally got it out.
They decided not to plumb any hot water to it – just cold. So how did they solve the issue with the mixer in the tap? Easy. They filled it with mountains of adhesive where it ran all the way down the pipe, and also successfully clogged the water outlet. Genius.
What blows my mind with this whole story is that they didn’t flip the house and move on. They moved in next door, where they continue to live quite happily. The cheek and audacity.
We’re obviously not on speaking terms any more, but the arrogance, complacency, audacity and lack of humility is astounding.