This is what the bathroom of flat 5 looked like after the tenants vacated, April 2024.
Not too bad for over thirty years of use.
It is hard to see in the photo, but a few of the tiles were cracked.
The ceiling needs painting. The heating light fitting rattled.
The sink is cracked and needs replacing.
The mirrors are flaking.
The cistern is clumsy and has no low-volume flush, but it is almost as good as it
was when installed over fifty years ago.
This is the lounge-dining room. The carpet is seriously worn out.
Walls need painting. Light fittings are old and not to my taste any more.
Curtains yucky.
The master bedroom is similar to the lounge.
The kitchen is surprisingly good!
I recall paying about $12k for it in 1991-ish.
Since then it has had a new dishwasher, oven, and an induction hob
with a wok gas ring on the side.
The cupboard knobs are worn and deeply filthy.
It is not obvious, but the lower cupboard doors showed their age,
and the wear of frequent spills, etc.
All the tiles survived, and the benchtop is sound. It was expensive laminate
on marine ply with a 30-year guarantee. It fulfilled that promise.
Back when I moved in, ANZAC day 1990, the kitchen has far less greenery outside,
and so dark tiles and benchtop made sense. Thank goodness that kitchen LED lights have
arrived with 3000-plus lumens.
This is mid renovation. The walls and ceiling have been painted.
The carpet will be torn out and replaced a week after this.
In the mean time I am using it as the workroom to fashion the new bathroom vanity top
out of an oak laminate.
At this point you can see that the balcony needs painting,
and its light fitting has already gone.
I have installed the electric curtain runner.
Finding suitable curtains will be a challenge.
I discover that Mansours is the best place to go, and I spent time
choosing the material. One place quoted $2k5, but Mansours managed it for $1k3.
The master bedroom was painted in a pale yellow.
I decided to go with a regular bed instead of a waterbed.
I could not resist a canopy bed. Here Phyllis is helping me assemble it.
Of German origin, it came with its own set of tools, including a cute plastic and rubber mallet.
This is the bed installed. I installed strip LED lighting, so that one can read at any angle
without shadows. You can see a new fan, and the bedside tables from Hillcrest.
The tallboy is back where it landed when I first bought it.
The vertical stained glass sundial on the window has lost it gnomen,
but then it now looks out on a lot of greenery that was too short to interfere
with the sun's rays when I originally designed it.
I bought a new sideboard to match the media lowboy.
Naturally it came as a kit.
This is the assembled version.
As he has become stained and dusty-looking, I renovated Nicolai too.
The master bedroom with most of the renovations done. I added a wooden head to the bed.
The bathroom nearly completed. Still needs a shaving mirror, a new cistern,
and maybe a new cord pull.
I always liked the cord pull Kay made for Flat 4:
I painted the more worn kitchen doors.
Phyllis thought this colour scheme would look awful.
We agree now that it does not.
It was an experiment using water-based gloss paints. They are much easier to use,
but not as good-looking as the oil version.
I am so looking forward to moving in and having espresso with breakfast.
Note Elektra waiting patiently at the end of the benchtop.
In the wee small hours of July 16, the kitchen hot water tap flexihose burst. This dumped hundreds of litres of very hot water into the kitchen. Pretty much the whole apartment was under about 20mm of water, except for the bathroom --- the only room that actually has a drain in the floor --- because the bathroom floor is a little higher and has a small step. Nobody in the block got a hot shower that morning, myself in flat 4 included.
My contents were insured with NRMA and they were wonderful.
In hours they had guys on site. They quickly realised that the carpet was ruined...
...we discovered this plugboard. It had sizzled and melted, staining
the carpet with its copper electrolysed out into the water!
In the next couple of days they drained the flat...
...sucking the water out with the 'Dalek', a serious wet vacuum machine.
So much water came out with this
that a person was kept busy emptying buckets of water from the tap at the front of the machine.
I was very lucky in that a lot of my things are essentially water resistant.
After the Dalek-vacuum finished, the carpet was still too heavy to lift.
Next they deployed so many industrial-strength dehumidifiers we had to ration them to not trip the breaker.
This is what it looked like after the carpet was carried out. The old underlay had
been left underneath the new (ruined) underlay. It was hard to scrape out.
Both the NRMA's guys and the excellent carpet layers who would come to lay the replacement carpet
thought that the previous layers had done a dodgy job. The Dulwich Hill-based guys were
better than the Alexandria guys. Exact same carpet and underlay.
Most everything less than a metre off the floor was ruined in the kitchen.
An exception, ironically, was the dishwasher. Inside the Bosche was probably the driest place in the whole apartment. Not having been used for weeks, it was quite dry inside. It detected the water on the floor, and immediately assumed that it was itself responsible. When I came in it was furiously and futilely running its pump.
The cleanup company was a specialist company that only dealt with flooded premises.
Their guys told me that 95% of their business came from "burst flexihoses".
These apparently have a 5 to 10 year lifespan.
It is impossible to buy a kitchen mixer tap without flexihoses. This pretty much guarantees their business.
This ought to be written in large red letters on the side of the boxes containing such taps!
Aside:
Weeks later I could not sleep and I got up about 2AM.
I could hear water-hammer events clunking the pipes. I am pretty sure these must have been coming from
outside, through the main water supply.
Eric has recorded similar events, pressure spikes, in his main water supply pipe in the north shore of Sydney.
This is the kind of event that blows up weak or perished flexihoses.
Eric's plumber installed a pressure-regulator on his whole house supply.
Start again.
The contents were insured with the NRMA. The kitchen turns out to be covered by the strata insurance company, CHU. This proved to be a wonderful opportunity to compare the actions of the two insurers, NRMA and CHU.
The person who picked up the phone at the NRMA took all the details and started the claim. Within a few hours there were people and machines dealing with the water. Within two weeks the NRMA's carpet contractor had found the exact same carpet. NRMA was helpful, understanding, responsive. They made decisions quickly. Their reputation is well deserved.
CHU was a managerial disaster. They are set up to fail.
The first person I contacted was in Melbourne.
They don't have a Sydney office.
For some reason, this was passed on to someone in Brisbane.
After a few days, an inspector came to assess the kitchen.
He did not dismantle anything, nor did he get down on his knees to look around.
He left, and eventually wrote a report that included the "scope of work",
noting that there might be variations because he did not dismantle the kitchen and might not appreciate everything.
The (Brisbane?) person chose a project management firm in Gosford to handle the work.
That PM company is 'Ezyprojects'.
That firm selects contractors around Sydney.
Next professional "kitchen removers" came, and pulled it all apart,
photographing everything. We agreed that he door was actually fine,
but a lot of the cabinet woodwork that was hidden had been soaked,
so they pretty much removed every bit of it except for the upper cupboards.
A plumber arrived separately to seal off pipes.
An electrician disconnected all the wiring.
We observed that the oven was not working, but they were not supposed to deal with appliances.
The deceased oven was left here, and remained for about 3 months.
The dismantler's observations demanded a change in the "scope of work", but this was not registered very quickly by CHU. A guy turned up to replace the door that did not need replacing. The new door was not painted (not his job). It later jammed, and he came back to re-hang it.
It took CHU 12 business days merely to approve the claim in the first place. They say on their web site that decisions are processed in 10 working days or less, but I had to ring them to get action. One of the people I was dealing with admitted to me that she had "5 days turnaround for email", so "calling would be faster". Faster seemed to mean a response in 2-3 days.
Next a guy (Gary) turned up from AllNew Kitchens to design the replacement kitchen. He duly realised that there needed to be another change of scope. This went up the chain. The quote had gone from about $19k5 to about $36k. Yes, those are the correct figures. I have a neighbour who installs kitchens. He reckoned it would cost $10k plus appliances, plumber, and electrician.
After 12 weeks, 60 business days, the project management company got a go-ahead. They allowed for the work to take 3 weeks.
As I type this, over 15 weeks have elapsed, and I expect a tiler to come and start work tomorrow, while "materials" that have been ordered will be ready on 18th November, so it will be 18 weeks when the new kitchen arrives.
Fortunately, as the apartment is legally not livable, I am getting $500/week.
All my furniture clumped together and moved from place to place so the new new carpet could be laid.
The first time, I had of course left the flat empty to make it easy.
The chief carpet guy, Mr Martyn, really knew what he was doing. He used the rear of the
flats as his cutting table.
The tiler proved to be there only to remove the splashback tiles. He did not take the rubble away with him, though.
Some weeks pass.
Come the 18th of November (about 18 weeks into this fiasco),
Ezyprojects told me that work would start on the 20th, a Wednesday.
On the 20th this was revised to Thursday 21st.
On the 21st, the electrician came to prepare the wiring under the cabinets.
This needs to be in conduit, despite being inaccessible.
The two other men came to deliver all the parts of the kitchen.
The parts filled the apartment.
They had to remove pictures to find enough wall to put it all in the place.
The delivery guys do not install. The next guy will do that. He was coming that afternoon.
He did not make it that afternoon, but he arrived on Friday the 22nd. Les, the installer, proved to be a quality craftsman, proud of his work. He no longer accepted apprentices, as they no longer display enough work ethic.
It was a long job, and he knew he would be 'pulling a late one'.
Inspecting the kitchen parts it soon became obvious that the
cupboard below the oven had no floor.
Also, the kickboards were screwed on from the inside,
so future access to plumbing or wires, etc., would be impossible.
The oven had not been delivered.
The loungeroom GPOs were left un-powered by the electrician who
came with the delivery guys.
The pantry proved to be about 10mm too wide, but had a 20mm void,
so Les had to remove, reduce, and refit it.
Plus, of course, the door remained unpainted.
Macka, the Ezyprojects PM, has arranged the final tiling, plumbing and power
wiring for later, likely 2nd December. I will be in NZ, so arrangements will
have to be made to let these guys in.
Now he gets to add door painting and oven to his list.
Note the screwheads. I went along, unscrewed all the kickboards, and
reattached them with a single screw each from the outside.
One day that may save a lot of pain.
As I type this it is 17:00 hours, and Les has not got to the benchtop yet.
By 8PM, 13 hours on the job, this is the progress.
By 8:30PM, sink and cooktop holes all sawn out.
The place is covered in dust.
You can just make out where the floor tiles do not match up with the cabinets.
Les reckons he will mention this, but frankly it should not be his problem.
Les finished very late.
The last time I looked at my watch it was 22:30.
This is the morning after... needs plumber and electrician, and
all the above, but we are making progress.
No rubbish removal, though. The site has accumulated uite a lot of offcuts, rubble, etc.
Next morning I discovered that the ironing board does not work.
There is some sort of clip-and-slider mechanism missing,
and without it the board does not pop up or stay up.
I searched on the abandoned cabinet downstairs,
and there are holes where this thing was once mounted, but it is gone.
This probably means they will have to get me a new one!
The remaining work was done while I was in NZ.
When I came back I was not happy at what I found.
Eleni and Phyllis had both warned me that there seemed to be a lot of dust and rubbish.
The image here shows what I found when I pulled the over out to wire the induction hob!
The cover plate was not even screwed on, nor the wires secured.
This image shows the condition in which the gas plumber left the cupboard.
The appliances were all covered in sawdust and chips.
I have been pulling little white chips out of the carpet.
Someone apparently had been sawing in the living room.
This shows the level of dust on a disk drive next to my iMac!
Moral of story: NEVER let a tradesman into your house when you are not there!
The tiler also did a terrible job. He even left concretey water in my organic waste bin.
He did not clean the tiles once grouted, and he left all his debris on the balcony.
Finished kitchen, view from the window looking west.
Finished kitchen, view from the fridge looking east.
The loungeroom on Christmas Day.
In the end, the renovation looks good.
Total elapsed time from incident to signoff: 157 days, over 22 weeks. CHU insurance is a total disaster.
Once completed, I moved in officially. I could hear a water-hammer in quiet moments. This never happened before. One has to wonder if this might not have helped the hose fail. I decided to investigate.
This is a photo of the meter access hatch on the first floor.
Note the lagged pipes attached to the left-hand wall, and the stopcock whose outlet has been sawn off. This is the original hot water riser pipe. It has been completely disconnected. The whole hot water riser system has been replaced. The new riser is the vertical pipe adjacent to the chimney. It is not lagged, and it turns out that it is not properly restrained. I can get a solid water-hammer sound wiggling it with one finger.
Also note the cable tie around the door latch that seems to be holding the meters in place. There is also a length of un-conduited TPI mains cable, and it is potentially able to touch the chimney. This whole job is a travesty.
It turns out that "Jemena" is the company responsible for the gas system infrastructure.
This is going to get turned over to them.