COWBOYS

[Thomo]

You can forget "Hi Ho Silver, John Wayne, and all the rest of the gunslinger Wild West Brigade, this has nowt to do with them at all. There are many able and conscientious tradesmen in our area, and I know most of the best. Yet there are even more, who pass themselves off as "Highly Qualified" Established Since" and "Time Served" that's a good one, Where? Armley, Strangeways? There was a time when an apprenticeship took seven years, now it can be two. So why does this make me angry? Nearly four years ago we were given the chance to move into this bungalow by the lady I work for occasionally, it had been Her Mothers home for about five years until She had to go into care. When we first saw it, it was ideal, the kitchen was almost new, and it shone. She was a lovely Woman, very tiny and frail, and I met her several times when called in to rectify small problems, She didn't do a lot of cooking and the kitchen looked well, We do a lot of cooking and the kitchen is heavily used, this started to highlight the faults about two years ago, a lot of filler had been used, this starts off white, but yellows rapidly, much use had been made of "liquid nails" this again turns yellow when exposed to cooking fumes. I could go on at length about the flaws that this brought to light, and shortly I will post some pics showing just how bad it was. A previous owner was what was known as "tight" or "near" as it is sometimes called locally, if he could do it himself he would, even worse, he offered his services to the neighbours, "Oh he was a lovely Man, always willing to help"! I have never in all my time come across a nicely built house with so many paint splashes on the stonework, the paths etc, or motor body filler used as a substitute for pointing or exhaust repair tape for mending the roof!! This house was originally built by Mr Briggs of "Briggs and Duxbury for himself in 1936 and the one next door for his Sister. It has seen many changes over the years, all the earlier work being carried out by proper tradesmen, but now it has to be put right in wake of Cowboys, do a bits and an assorted bunch of tossers who never owned a spirit level or probably didn't understand or care that sometime someone would come along who did . Even worse, I now know that the last lot were paid "up front". I have just spent the last three days removing all of the offensive efforts of these people with a four pound lump hammer and a bolster chisel, I will describe later some of the horrors that I have found. The bottom line here is "If you can do it right, then fine, if you cannot, then be careful who does it for you". The pics will appear as, "before, during, and after". Time now to start cooking again!

[Thomo]

That's it, all of the crap has been uncovered and removed, and re-construction has begun, the old tiles are now in a skip. Three different grades of tiles had been used and fixed in place with four blobs of liquid nails leaving a void under each tile of about 1/8", spider homes, re tiling begins tomorrow. They will be straight and level, with an even surface and "gapped" correctly.

[catgate]

That's it, all of the crap has been uncovered and removed, and re-construction has begun, the old tiles are now in a skip. Three different grades of tiles had been used and fixed in place with four blobs of liquid nails leaving a void under each tile of about 1/8", spider homes, re tiling begins tomorrow. They will be straight and level, with an even surface and "gapped" correctly.

My heart goes out to you.
We have been fighting our way through a similar thing since the end of May.
We bought a bungalow that was a modern triumph of form over function. The woman from whom we bought it had spent many, many thousands of pounds on a new kitchen, a new bathroom, fancy lighting and all fitted by one armed day release operators from the blind institute, about eighteen months before. It all looked very nice at first glance with the subdued lights and all, but after moving in we saw it in daylight. We also saw many other things that were hidden under cupboard and work tops after moving in.
The first thing I had to do was to remove the kitchen door in order to plane some off it in order to persuade it to open. The handle and escutcheon plate were hanging off. The door must not have been opened for a very long time because as I was messing about out side removing the door I saw that the waste grate was overflowing as management emptied a bowl of water in the kitchen sink. I had to take up the grate and various bits of pipe work and eventually after scooping lots of white stuff out, followed by getting my rods out and giving it a thorough prodding, I ended up with three-quarters of a bucket of congealed plaster and polyfiller dumped down the sink by the blind institutes mob. Mrs Woman must have either been oblivious to it or had ignored it for eighteen months.
I am currently engaged in reworking the bathroom (the tiled in bath has to be pulled out entirely) so that I can secure the fancy water spout, that is the main tap, to stop it moving every time it is touched.
We will get to the end of it all eventually but it is going to be a long hard road.