Trouble in Paradise

Picture the scene, come on humor me … close your eyes and recall an image of the villains in your favourite spaghetti western, faces covered with bandanas not because of the arid land and the dust blowing through the empty street. No, these bandanas are to conceal their identity. Envisage them moving stealthily away from the bank that they have just robbed, their arms laden with saddle bags full of the proceeds of their crime as they make their way to the horses tied to a post at the rear of the general store. With their ill-gotten gains safely secured they mount their horses and ride off into the desert hooting and hollering at their good fortune as the sun sets before them.

Now imagine that the horses carrying our villains off into the sunset are branded on their hind quarters with the words LDG Consulting and you will have a pretty accurate picture of the roofing contractors who had just swindled us out of an extortionate amount of money. As you will remember our roofing contractors vanished hastily as the sun was setting on the first day of the scheduled works to paint the roof of our barn and house having broken our deck and ripped off some of our guttering.

Well, we could not wait for the sun to rise the following day and get up on both roofs to assess their work and see if there were any other unpleasant surprises waiting for us. And let’s just say that we were not surprised at the magnitude of unpleasant surprises we discovered, by going up on to the roofs we had opened the proverbial Pandoras Box!

As we examined their shoddy workmanship the issues, we diligently recorded on our note pad almost equalled the amount of “WTF’s” we declared to each other in exasperation, we were going to need a bigger note pad. Butch and Sundance had really done a number on us, among the most obvious screw ups were.

• Grey paint over sprayed onto the white facias and paint work on the house and barn.
• Grey paint over sprayed all the way up the side of our wooden shed.
• They had unbelievably missed huge areas of the roofs which were still showing blue.
• Finally, and even more frustratingly they had also failed to power wash the roof before painting (despite having an industrial power washer with them and a bowser full of water) and consequently spray painted over bird poop, swathes of pine needles, washers, dirt and any other debris that was littering the roofs, you name it they sprayed it, except the areas they were supposed to.

As a result of this there were runs, drips, blobs of lumpy paint and the paint in some areas was already peeling off or bubbling up and looked like someone had had set to it with a heat gun. We are by no means professional roofing contractors but even we could see that it had been so badly painted that it was highly likely the whole lot would peel off over time (and not a long time at that). As far as we were concerned the whole lot, everything that they had painted grey needed to be removed, the roofs cleaned properly and then re-painted ‘properly’.

Armed with our extensive list of snags we were good and fuming by the time our cheating buckeroos were due to arrive. 9am came and went, as did 10am, 11am, midday … are you getting the picture? Our roofing contractors ‘Spray and Walk Away’ had rode off into the sunset never to return! Mother fudgers!

They had skulked off into the shadows even leaving the trailer carrying all the equipment that they had brought with them behind. We now had access to their paint sprayer, pressure washer, bowser, paint Etc. We were so peeved off that we used our vehicles to block the trailer in should they try and sneak back and take the trailer during the night, if needs be we would sell everything on the trailer including the damn trailer itself to recuperate some money, this whole situation had driven us to the depths of pettiness!

But there was more than one way to skin a cat as the saying goes, so we got on to the phone to the company owner, the phone rang and rang before clicking on to voicemail. A voicemail message would not do justice to the utter disgust and disappointment we were feeling, we needed this mess sorted out. We tried multiple times throughout that afternoon to contact the company owner but sensing trouble it would seem he was screening calls from Martin.

We left calling him for a while before using my mobile phone (a number that the company owner would not recognise) and miraculously he picked up. We explained the situation and the poor-quality work carried out by his team who we then discovered were in fact subcontractors that he had engaged. He apologised profusely and made all the right noises in all the right places; he gave us assurances that he would contact the subcontractors and come to the house tomorrow to see the damage for himself and discuss a resolution.

This week was starting to feel like a long year, and it was only Tuesday, but we were ever hopeful we would be able to get some of this mess sorted out tomorrow once the company owner arrived.

As promised the owner of LDG consulting arrived promptly with pen and A4 notepad in hand, which reassured us to some extent that our concerns were going to be taken seriously. We gave him the grand tour of the disaster area that is our roofs before adjourning to the kitchen where we offered him coffee and even a biscuit.

Giles (please call me Gil) told us that he was disappointed and embarrassed by the standard of work demonstrated by the subbies, this was the second time that they had let him down. What? Wait a minute … they have done this before, and you continued to use them!! An alarm bell was gently ringing. Gil looked us in the eyes and with hand on chest for maximum effect gave us his solemn promise, my word is my bond type of promise that he will personally ensure that the issue with the roofs is resolved to our satisfaction. If alarm bells weren’t clanging loudly now, then they should have been.  

Martin and I are the type of people who always try to see the best in people and give them the benefit of the doubt but have been left disappointed so many times now it is a wonder we have not become cynical and bitter instead of being the gluttons for punishment we continue to be.

As you are guessing Giles, call me Gil’s word was about as good as a promise made by a compulsive liar but more about that in a future post. For now, let’s just say that we gave Gil the benefit of the doubt and trusted that he would arrange for a team to come out to the house and give us the paint job worthy of the small fortune he was charging us.

Don’t worry, the week was not all doom and gloom for not only were we about to finally take possession of our household items including Martin’s tools and equipment which were on a truck scheduled for delivery by the end of the week, one of us was also about to become gainfully employed and more importantly significant news regarding Lola was imminent.