Markus’ Blog

The lovely previous owners of our condo left behind a little surprise for us when we took possession of the place in August. In the spot where they used to have their BBQ, they had built a shelter from beer bottles and in that shelter was a mama pigeon with two eggs.

To this day we haven’t been able to figure out how it was possible for the bird to build a nest in a spot that used to be occupied by a BBQ and when and why they built the shelter for the bird. They did it after we inspected the suite, that’s for sure.

Anyways, it took a lot of effort and phoning around (on Brigette’s part) — the eggs had long since hatched — to finally find out that nobody can do anything about the birds, because the babies were too small. Wildlife Services said the best thing to do is to just wait till they are old enough to leave.

They did leave two or three weeks ago. But they didn’t leave without a trace. Our patio is now covered in bird poop. It’s litterally everywhere. There’s lots of it in and around the shelter, and not quite as much everywhere else.

The last couple of weeks now were spent trying to find somebody to clean the deck and see if there’s a way the strata would pay for it (because we sure as hell aren’t going to). Our property manager gave us the contact information of somebody, and we got a quote of $295 pre-tax (that’s $312.70 with taxes) to clean the deck. The strata said nope, they can’t pay for it. It’s between the previous owners and us.

Now we already know that the previous owners are poo-poo heads because they:

• Didn’t leave the keys in the suite on the day we took possession, like it had been agreed upon.
• A day after we found that out and complained, the keys were suddenly there, meaning they simply entered the premises without permission.
• When confronted, categorically denied doing so.
• Left the kitchen cabinets (and other areas) a disaster zone (spices and bread crumbs in the drawers, stove dirty), etc.
• Left us some pigeons on the deck.
• Completely ignored a letter we sent them two months ago stating our unhappiness with the birds and the dirtiness of the place.

All of this doesn’t bode so well and means that we’ll end up having to take them to Small Claims Court if we don’t want to end up with the bill. I’d consider it a minor miracle if they came to their senses and paid for it without being dragged before court first.

We are so going to do that, though, if we have to, because this is just bullsh*t. You sell your condo first, then (after all the contracts have been signed) you build a bird shelter for a bird that hasn’t been there before and you leave the new owners with a $300 bill to clean the mess up the birds made? I don’t think so.

What else is there to say? We had Milani Plumbing install our kitchen sink and it has been one big disaster. Not only did it take the guy four hours to install our kitchen sink and faucet, it turned out today that he didn’t tighten one of the connectors of the drain enough. The result was we had a slowly dripping sink, leading to a nice puddle of waste water in our new kitchen cupboard.

We think the cabinets will be fine, but it’s SO frustrating to have such incompetent contractors. It took me all of 30 seconds to tighten everything up. Why can’t somebody who allegedly learned the trade do that?

GRRAAAAARRRR!!!!

I went to my first strata meeting yesterday night. Brigette was at school, so I went by myself. It was an interesting experience. I met most owners in our building, which has a total of only 27 suites. Everybody seems nice, friendly and cares for the building and what goes on in and around it.

It was a pretty good and informative meeting, but it also showed some areas that need serious improvement. Most things that didn’t go over quite right are due to lack of experience, I think. The building used to be a rental property and was converted into an owner-building less than two years ago, so nobody on the strata seems to have a lot of experience of “how it works”.

During the good parts, I learned about roofing options, contents insurance, fire drills and other useful stuff. The not-so-good parts were organizatorial and related to budget issues.

For one, they should have really set up chairs for everybody, so we could have all sat down — or if that was’t possible, tell people to bring their own. They didn’t say anything and there were no chairs. That meant I got to stand for two and a half hours.

Secondly, the budget for 2007 was mostly identical to year’s with some unexplained increases. It looket like there was little or no effort put into it by council to question items or try to make it more sensible. The budget has some pretty high figures in it (for photocopying or landscaping) that don’t make much sense. Yet, they stayed from last year or even increased. Also, everybody except for me voted to approve it. So, on one hand council didn’t do a great job with the budget, but the owners didn’t think about it much, either. — It was mostly me asking some questions. The only answers I got were: “We took that from last year.” “We went over last year, so we increased it.” “Errrr…I don’t know. I guess we could combine them together next year…”

Lastly, there were quite a few by-law changes. They didn’t go over them individually or at least section by section. They asked “Does anybody have any questions?” I asked a few. Then there were a couple more (not many) asked by others. No explanations other than the questions asked. Then we were asked to approve or reject the by-laws. All of them at once, the whole package, from pets to rental restrictions to quiet hours, etc., etc., not individual paragraphs. Not good. It was a very diverse package. Again, it was passed, just like the budget.

Over all, it’s looking a bit like owners in our building say “yes” too easily.

Brigette’s on council now and acting as the council’s treasurer. Let’s hope that her financial background and both our ideas and thoughts will help make a change for the better and improve council work and strata meetings going forward.

It actually looks like things are coming together slowly. Our place is starting to look less of a mess (mind you there are still quite a few boxes waiting to be unpacked), and the majority of the contractor work is done now. Who would have thunk.

It wasn’t an easy journey and it’s not quite over yet, but it feels good to see the place starting to look like we envisioned it.

Our experience with contractors hasn’t been exactly smooth. There have been quite a few hickups, stupid mistakes and plain carelessness as well as thoughtlessness. It can be so frustrating. One would think that, since they get paid to do a job, they might care (at least a little) whether their clients are satisfied with what they deliver. Well, it seems that 90% of the time that’s not the case. They could care less. And they love pointing the finger at others: “It’s not our fault, XYZ screwed up.” “ABC should have done that.”

The really “funny” thing is that it’s exactly the same way, half way across the world, in Austria. You have to deal with contractors, you better get prepared for some disappointment and the need to fight to get what you paid for in a somewhat timely manner.

It almost seems like there’s a whole worldwide contractor mafia out there, conspiring to piss off their clients and make their life as hard as humanly possible while getting paid for it.

At least we seem to be slowly getting to where we want to be, it’s just not an easy journey. In the next few days I might write up a little chronology of what was supposed to happen and what actually happened.

Yay! We’re moved! And quite obviously the most important thing is already up and running: Computers and Internet. Such geeks we are.

However, so much more needs to be unpacked, moved into storage, organized, gone through, etc., etc. There are about a meeeellion boxes in our living/dining room area right now. Much more fun for many more days.

The last couple of days have been characterized by a certain activity called packing, and there’s yet more stuff to pack.

It started earlier last week, Wednesday-ish. Then we packed some more boxes Friday night. On Saturday I went to my office to get some additional boxes — fortunately we have lots of them lying around that I was allowed to take. Some more packing followed Saturday afternoon/evening.

On Sunday, we didn’t pack too much. However, this doesn’t mean we lazed out. We went to Walmart to get night stands, to Home Depot to figure out what to do with our towel rod (the ones they seem to have are all too long for our wall, finally we went with hooks) and dropped all the stuff we bought off at the new place.

Coming home, it was time to — you guessed it — PACK! Not after having yummy dinner first, though, and some pie in between boxes.

On top of everything else, we both weren’t feeling too great. Brigette’s kidneys, neck and head hurt pretty bad while I seem to have caught a cold and my nose and sinuses are all stuffed up. My throat’s not feeling right, either.

Quite a bit of packing got done, though, so I can’t complain. There’ll be more packing fun later tonight.

The beginning of part two of the kitchen install didn’t go over so well. Even though the Modus guys installed the cabinets on Monday, they are not the ones doing the counter top. That is handled by a different contractor, Fits Right, who seem to be a whole bunch of losers. Not only do they not listen to you, they don’t give a damn, are rude, inconsiderate and a big P.I.T.A. to work with.

Quite obviously, they are getting way too many contracts from IKEA, so they don’t care one little bit about the individual customer. Somebody doesn’t like their way of handling things? To bad for them. There are lots of other jobs to be done out there. That seems to be company philosophy.

Yesterday they said they would phone and schedule the counter top measuring, which takes all of 5 minutes and which has to be done before the actual install can take place. Installation usually happens 5 business days after measuring.

Next thing we know, one of their employees phones today and says, “I’m in the neighbourhood, can I stop by?” Well, no, you can’t. We don’t live there yet and your boss knows that. That’s what yesterday’s phone conversation was all about. To let you (your boss) know that you cannot just stop by, ’cause nobody’s gonna be there.

After that, a whole bunch of nasty and fruitless phone conversations took place. Fits Right was all of a sudden refusing, yes, REFUSING, to pre-book their measuring appointment. “We just do them between our regular jobs, that’s why we just stop by, ” they said. And they were really nasty and bitchy as well. Completely unwilling to co-operate, to work something out that’s acceptable to both parties. This is the way we work, you don’t like it, we won’t do the installation. That was their message. And they just hung up. Which contractor in his/her right mind just hangs up on their paying customer? — Exactly.

Finally, after complaining to IKEA, they agreed to phone half an hour before coming in for the measuring — which was exactly what we wanted them to do in the first place and which they had refused to do in the direct talks. Only after our IKEA contact spoke to them, they suddenly agreed.

Fits Right sucks the big one and so does IKEA for dealing with them.

We got our new IKEA kitchen installed today. It was a bit of a hassle, but the end-result looks great. Yay! So much better than the original kitchen.

The contractors who were doing the break down of the old cabinets and installed the new ones did an awesome job. They worked really hard. And IKEA was not helping. They had screwed up our order and delivered the wrong corner cabinet (39″ instead of 30″). Of course, the corner cabinet is the most important one. Without that up, nothing else can go up.

One of the contractors had to drive all the way out to Coquitlam to get the right cabinet, while all the others could do was sit around and wait — for an hour. According to guys, they are used to screw-ups. Happens to them pretty much every single time, they said, and one of them has to go and get something exchanged.

So they ended up staying late (till almost 8:00pm) to make up for the lost time, even though it wasn’t their fault. A big thank you goes out to the guys from Modus. Big thanks also to Brigette, who spent the whole day waiting for, advising and working with them.

We love our new kitchen.