Third Payment

Another entry about payments.  I faxed our third payment request today and had requested for an amount which was different to what the banks expected.  That was because my invoice said the balance was $400 less.  This is to account for the refund that was due to us because no extra fencing was installed (see entry on the 18th of December).

Catherine from our broker's office said the bank has alerted her of this error.  I explained what had happened and Catherine assured me that if they ring her again, she could explain it all for me.

Just looking forward to smoother payment transactions.  No biggie, but worth noting as it could happen to someone else.

Bricks All Done!

It's soooo exciting!!!  The bricks are all done after the brickies worked 5 more days on our house. Through that time, I was able to drop by twice to bring some fruit.  

Today, I rang around 11.30am and the head honcho said they were just cleaning up.  I hurriedly bought some food and treated them to fried chicken, fried rice and coke.  I know, I know, their work is finished already.  No more reason to woo them.  However, I truly wanted to thank them for working through some of the hottest days we've had this summer and doing a great job at that (according to our site supervisor).

There were left-over bricks which I asked to be left in case we wanted to use them for a mailbox or across the front yard.  According to our site supervisor, they do leave the intact bricks behind.  I really appreciate our site supervisor as I left a message for him at midday and by 2pm, he had rung me back with all the details I needed plus more.  He was very forthcoming with the schedule and had even given me the estimated finish time, with and without the rain days (2 weeks) & Christmas shutdown (3 weeks).  At this stage, we are apparently 13 weeks and two days into the building since he got the paperwork.  Take away the 5 week allowance and we would be only on week 8.  That's not too bad considering the timeline I managed to find from another builder.

He has the cleaning of the bricks booked in on Saturday, scaffold adjustment on Monday, fascia and gutters on Tuesday & Wednesday, and the roof tiles will start to go on on Thursday or Friday.

Rain has Finally Stopped

It has been drizzling, showering, raining for nine days straight.  Today, there was no rain at all.   I drove to our site to see if anyone was working...no such luck!  However, tonight, Von told me that our site supervisor rang him up to say  that the brickies will be back tomorrow.

It has been all that gloomy, though.  On Rainy Day 4, more bricks arrived.  Well, apparently, the builders do allow for about 2 weeks of rain when estimating finish time.  We've just about used that much time.  Here's hoping that autumn will bring less rain and less harsh weather for the contractors to work in.   

Second Payment

Yet another bungle with payments.  I faxed through our request on the 4th of Feb as payment was due on the 9th.  Today, I got a call from our broker's office to say that the bank only got one out of the two pages I sent.  And they only told me now???  Well, actually, technically, they didn't even tell me.  I had to hear it from our broker's office.  They most probably lost it is more like the story!

I faxed it through hurriedly to our broker and we agreed that any future payments, I would fax the request to them and they would forward it on for me to ensure that the paperwork goes through.  Imagine if I didn't have a broker?  The banks didn't even bother to acknowledge the fax.  Besides, we have no particular customer service officer assigned to us.  Again, our broker has saved the day.