So, as many of you know from my instagram..... We had a bit of a down day at the house on Saturday. The windows arrived and I was so excited to see them. But as soon as they came out of that truck...my excitement turned into massive disappointment. Things had gone wrong. Our tall skinny master bedroom windows had been cut in two with a big aluminum bar running through them 300mm above the ground and the French doors (one pair which are right near the entrance of the house also had these aluminum bars through them. This is not uncommon, in fact most French doors have them, but it's precisely what I didn't want. The big problem was, it was on our plans....I had noticed this and made sure to check several times that all the doors and large windows were just a big pane of glass "like the front door" but this is where things go wrong. Saying things like "one big pane of glass" "like the front door" isn't enough. You need to use the right words and those words were not in my vocabulary....until Saturday.
Vision Bars..... Remember this term if you are a normal customer and not an experienced project manager.... Vision bars!!!! See amazing diagram below.
We don't even have kids who are going to run full speed into a window and when we do, I'll buy a little sucky toy and stick it on at their eye level....like my Nana had to do after I ran into her sliders three times as a child. And come to think of it, she HAD vision bars, they don't even work!!!! Actually, I intend to hold those sliding doors with ineffective vision bars responsible for knocking out the area of my brain that could have harboured the term 'vision bars'.
It's a funny thing this house building because we just feel very lucky that we can do this, yes, we work very hard to make it happen but we still feel incredibly grateful that we have the chance to do something like this, so with that being said, complaining about seemingly small things like a bar across some glass may be ridiculous. But in the relevance of our world at the moment. We are living and breathing this project, we practically only see friends at wedding's, 30ths and baby showers these days. I've even had to miss a couple of good friends Hen's weekends. We keep track of every measly dollar during this build so that we don't run over budget and end up with a dream home filled with our blood, sweat and (after Saturday) tears that we can't afford so when things like this happen it can feel like quite a blow.
Glen at Vistalite called this morning to advise me that they will be taking care of the master bedroom windows because what we have on our plans is nothing like what they provided but when it come to the two sets of French doors and the laundry door, because it was on the plans and I didn't say those two stupid words (oh how I wish I'd asked what they were called!) they will replace it all and charge us for the materials only....which will add a painful $3000 to our already huge window bill. To be fair (I always try and see both sides of the story, they were on the plan and I didn't say 'no vision bars') they are trying to meet us halfway.
But, this phone call is where it got very embarrassing, as soon as he said that, the emotion over took me and I could tell I was about to cry. I had to say, "ok thanks Glen, I will have to call you back sorry I'm a little bit upset"....... Great. Only mildly mortified. So Guy has taken it from here...I'm too emotionally invested as this stage, I felt like I did my absolute best at communicating what I wanted and it wasn't quite good enough and it's going to cost us....
Oh, that all sounds so doomish and gloomish...But don't worry I'm not gonna beat myself up, listen to sad songs and not get out of my pajamas....I'm gonna live and learn, brush up on my building vocab and post this blog so that those of you who are also building can maybe learn from my mistake.
And if anyone needs their car washed I'm thinking of putting Guy in a speedo at Waikuku beach on Saturday and doing a sexy one for $10.... I'd pay for that.
Need to raise this money somehow right?
