Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Anyone who has built a house in the UK will know that the US style of 'customer-focused' service has not yet arrived / been imposed on the world of building and its close relations. At least not here. The client is in general the one apologising for stuff in they builder's way, not enough biscuits, the architect's drawing's lack of clarity and for pacing the site with a bin bag permanently attached to their hand gathering up the builders' discarded fag butts, Pot Noodles and - often - the instructions for the sliding door that have been trodden into the ground.

On a meticulous building like ours one spends much time getting people to correct errors they have made along the way. I've come to accept that rarely will things be right first time, so the stomach-sinking moment of calling a tradesperson to begin the re-appraisal of the job, is something I am trying to get used to. And yet I am time and time again floored by how reluctant tradespeople are to say 'Sorry' even for the most superficial customer relations reasons. In other words, saying sorry even if you think you're in the right, to make the other party feel better and hence treat you better in the long run. Is it that hard to?! Why are tradespeople exempt from this common courtesy?

It must be page one in almost every other profession's "Guide To Getting On With People You Work For' and yet I have never ever heard it from anyone that's worked on the site regardless of how often they have delayed the job, got it wrong, misjudged something, not turned up or damaged something on site. Is it a guy thing or a coincidence that the profession is male -dominated?
If you've hired female builders please let me know otherwise!?

Take for example our order to have a simple coir doormat fitted on site recently by one of Kendal's leading carpet retailers. The guys come and go, we look at their endeavours and find 3 out of 4 badly hacked edges and even a slither of mat stuffed under the door frame to try and make up for the all-round undersizing of the piece. The bill arrives - £133. Adam calls them to tell them that the job isn't good enough and is met with the all too familiar terse local response "Well, OUR people were satisfied with the job..."
Well, that's the matter settled then is it?
No!
Here's how to do it: "Oh, I am really sorry to hear that and apologise if the work is not to your satisfaction - how can we help put it right?"

What's really perplexing is that 9 times out of 10 the person does return to remedy the problem and not always because we won' t pay them until they do. They usually look at the work, sigh deeply and acknowledge the cock-up.

The peculiar dynamic of these meetings is such that one can't tell if they literally couldn't see what a bad job they'd done before (bad) or if they left the job knowing it wasn't going to wash with the client and didn't care (worse).
Probably they just hoped to get away with it. And now they haven't.
And it's you, the client, who should be sorry, ok?

Flattery will get you anywhere

Sometimes building can really get you down, as the guy on last night's Grand Design's more than illustrated. But then he was clearly nuts, trying to build what was really a folly and getting into a Planning nightmare that I sincerely empathised with (one day I will write our saga)....
When you spend your waking hours persuading locals (tradespeople, Planners, neighbours) of the sincerity of your ambitions - and usually failing - its SO nice to get feedback from perfect strangers on how much they love the Love Shack.
I had some the other day from The Modern House a company which to call an 'estate agent' is like calling The Love Shack , erm...just that, a shack.
Thanks guys.

Nearly a bathroom

News in brief

Since moving in to the house for some reason I haven't felt much like blogging, and Lord knows it isn't that there's nothing to say. Since the world's longest festive holiday we have had exactly 8 hrs of builder time - that's in over a month - for reasons unclear. Could be that we've stopped paying bills until the work is "finished to our satisfaction" as those bills say at the bottom ;-)
However Adam and I in typical style have responded by cursing our tradesmen on one hand and flailing around with rollers and tools whenever we can, on the other. Some DIY has been more successful than others...
- Last weekend Adam and me hired some tools and clad the entry porch in crisp larch, very nice from the house to see it
- We still await various bits of cedar interior trims mysteriously languishing in someone's barn - rumour has it they arrive Sunday
- A nice tiler, the first in the Yellow Pages - is underway already in the bathroom
- The woodburner install now needs a prop under the cantilever - I'm told it won't show - as it's so heavy (I keep asking why the engineers forgot this, its one of those things you lose energy pursuing). I now accept that the stove will probably cost more than the kitchen in the end...
- Speaking of kitchens, the Corian saga goes full circle and we're back with the real thing cos its the only thing they can actually do the sexy moulded sink in
-I have ordered a disgustingly expensive sofa which takes 10 weeks to come, at least the cats might be out of here in time not to ruin it
- And finally I have updated the budget, though in the present climate it all seems dangerously like Monopoly

Filthy lucre

Anyone who knows us will guess that it is with very mixed feelings that we let out the Shack this year for holidays. But a self-build without a mortgage is not at all easy, and needs must.
So www.lakedistrictloveshack.com
has been born and awaits bookings.
I confess I have rather enjoyed doing the website, which has included looking at a lot of other cottages' websites and recoiling in horror at "luxury kitchens" of wall to wall 1986 MFI units, maroon carpets and orange pine bedsteads. Not being someone who self-caters much, I hadn't realised how bad it had got out there. My family had a holiday home on Arran for decades and it resolutely stuck at its very basic slash eccentric end - a 60's homemade kitchen, a baby grand piano and a lot of unmatching porcelain.

I name this house

I thought that renaming our house officially to The Love Shack would be fairly simple, but it turns out you need to have it approved by the Council before the Royal Mail say yes too and they might deliver the odd letter.
When everyone agrees it means your address is 'official' and you can get your stationery printed.
The origins of The Love Shack as a name are lost in the mists of my memory, but it quickly stuck and even found its way onto the Council's documents, to my amusement. It's written all over the building's components too.

The shack's current name is "Argent Close", which as someone in the Council's Building Control said last week, sounds like a whole row of houses in a mining town, rather than a tiny log cabin in a wood.

Apparently the whole point of the Council's Naming & Numbering Dept. is to clarify things like that. No-one there mentioned - at first - concepts like 'appropriate' - a word much favoured by the Lake District Planning Authority and used fast and loose in any context which requires them to quash stuff they don't like.

So after a pregnant pause from them I received a message back:

"We would like to receive your second choice of house name."
Me - "Why, is there a problem with 'The Love Shack'?"
"We would like to receive your second choice of house name."
Me - "Yes, but why?"
" Something that reflects the local area is usually good. We will then check that there is no duplication before going ahead."
(Duplication, of The Love Shack?!) I then -to them at least - begged that the quirkiness of the house deserved a quirky name. And that it was Christmas.
Privately I raged against the local Taste Police, irate that even the name of your own property was controlled by the Council, was there no end to their attempts to derail us?! Would it have to be called "Fluttering Leaves" or "The Cabin"?!

Then this morning came a quiet email from the Council in my Inbox,
"I have a note on my desk stating that your house name has been accepted".
Not exactly a warm reception but a small triumph for freedom! And no, we're not big fans of the B52s actually.

Sunday night at the shack

The move was of course unspeakably hellish - it's one thing carrying all your building materials up a steep hill manually but when it comes to one's worldly possessions you really do start to question whether you need more than two mugs and a toothbrush. I even began to wonder if the cats could be shackled to small paniers to move their cat litter and food bowls uphill. The worse thing was having to move the 6 ringbound folders of Shack admin up the hill, as we can't risk storing it when there's all the VAT return to do and bills to organise.....
Anyhow, very unfinished but very cosy, here is Adam relaxing for once waiting for the builders to return this week. We hope / dread.