The Stress of Having My House Reroofed
I provided facilities for hot drinks; they did shoddy work
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| Photo taken by the author. |
Recently, I had some builders in to reroof my house. Being autistic and dealing with strangers made it a stressful and tiring experience. It will take me some time to recover.
I tend to worry about the things that other people might not even think about. In this case, before the work started, I found myself worrying about what to do regarding drinks.
I wanted to reduce the risks associated with Coronavirus by not allowing the builders to use my cups. If possible, I didn’t want them coming into the house at all. But at the same time, I didn’t want to be mean.
Making drinks for a group of people, and remembering what each person wants, is always stressful for me. So I bought a cheap kettle, and set up a table outside with drinks facilities, disposable cups and biscuits.
Sadly, despite me telling them about it, they didn’t use my ‘refreshments table’ on the first day.
Toilet facilities was another problem. My house only has one toilet, and I was concerned about having to let the builders use it.
To reduce the risks as much as possible, I removed as many items as I could from the bathroom, such as toothbrushes and towels. Then I put paper towels near the sink.
That meant there was quite a lot for me to do before they arrived every morning, and also every evening, to put things back to normal.
On the first evening, after they’d left for the day, I was horrified to find a wet patch behind my side gates, against the house wall. I hoped it was just a drink that had been poured away, but suspected they might have been too lazy to ask to use the toilet!
I wanted proof, so I found an old CCTV camera, and spent time trying to set it up, hoping to get some evidence the following day. Eventually I realised it would be too much work to set up the camera, so I abandoned the idea.
On the second day, I simply didn’t bother setting up the refreshments table. Later that morning, one of them came and asked about it, so I had to quickly set it up once again…
Once the work started, I found myself pacing around, not being able to settle on doing anything. It seemed like every time I sat down, there was a knock on the door and they needed to ask me something. As the only adult in the house, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without fear of being disturbed.
It felt like I was on high alert all the time. The noise was almost constant, and it was not easy to tell if they were knocking on the door or just using a hammer. Every time one of them had used the toilet, I wiped down every surface that they might have touched.
Eventually, I made myself a hot drink, sat down, and tried to do something productive on my laptop. Having something else to focus on really helped to pass the time. But hearing my old concrete roof tiles being thrown into a skip was still quite distracting!
The second day might have been the worst one in some ways. A lot of repointing work was going on, and the air was full of cement and brick dust, as angle grinders caused large dust clouds to drift down the road.
Despite having the windows closed (apart from where their extension cable was plugged in), it felt like the air was not exactly good for my health. It felt like I had sand and cement in my mouth at times.
After the work was finished, I noticed some problems. The builders had a rather dismissive attitude, even after one problem turned out to be a cracked tile, which would have caused a leak if they hadn’t fixed it!
They made me feel like I was being overly fussy. Perhaps they’re not used to customers looking at every little detail, but that’s how my mind works. And once I see a flaw, I seem to think about nothing else until it’s sorted out.
After they’d gone, I noticed yet more problems. Some damage had been done to my gas boiler’s flue cover, and also to a tile on a bay window. Another annoyance is that they did extra work to replace the lead on a small flat roof, but they trimmed in an uneven, slap-dash way. Surely being 1cm too short in one place, and 10cm too long in others is sub-standard?
I hope it won’t be too much longer until all the snags are dealt with. However, I suspect that I will have to learn to live with some of them, because I don’t have the energy to keep complaining. (I fixed the flue cover myself.)
My next task will be cleaning the debris left in the loft, and putting some things back up there. I plan to start with the things that I know I need to keep, such as the Christmas decorations and suitcases.
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