Update
Back at work as of this week. Still not back at home.
If you're looking for someone to insure your house with, may I recommend that you don't go with Tower Insurance. The company that does their assessing and suchlike is based in Australia and has 3 or 4 people (based in Auckland) covering the entirety of NZ. Currently they send a guy over from Melbourne for a couple of weeks a month to do assessments in the SI, which means that the work starts stacking up quickly.
I got my assessment done quickly (only because Dad pointed out that the tenant couldn't live in the house until the work was done), but the quotes on the repairs are taking a while.
Builder #1 is not locatable in the white page, the yellow pages or on the Net. I have no idea what work he quoted on as needing to be done. He is (unfortunately) also the guy the the assessors gave the cleaning & restoration contract to. He did about half of it (to a fantastic standard admittedly), but seems to think he's done. I can't get hold of him to find out why he only did half due to the aforementioned non-existence in the usual publications.
Builder #2 I liked. Not only did he introduce himself & his painter, but he also gave me his business card in case I had any questions later. I know exactly what he is quoting on. Downside here, is that the flooring guys want to see the area from themselves before they'll say yes or no on the numbers that he told them he wanted to use. The only contact number they've got for me is my cell. Which they haven't called on. They claim to be unable to reach me. The builder hasn't had any trouble on the four occasions he's rung (once to set up the initial time, three to see if the flooring guy has rung yet).
I suspect that the first guy will put in a cheaper quote unfortunately.
I'd really like to have a kitchen I can use so that I can move back home....
If you're looking for someone to insure your house with, may I recommend that you don't go with Tower Insurance. The company that does their assessing and suchlike is based in Australia and has 3 or 4 people (based in Auckland) covering the entirety of NZ. Currently they send a guy over from Melbourne for a couple of weeks a month to do assessments in the SI, which means that the work starts stacking up quickly.
I got my assessment done quickly (only because Dad pointed out that the tenant couldn't live in the house until the work was done), but the quotes on the repairs are taking a while.
Builder #1 is not locatable in the white page, the yellow pages or on the Net. I have no idea what work he quoted on as needing to be done. He is (unfortunately) also the guy the the assessors gave the cleaning & restoration contract to. He did about half of it (to a fantastic standard admittedly), but seems to think he's done. I can't get hold of him to find out why he only did half due to the aforementioned non-existence in the usual publications.
Builder #2 I liked. Not only did he introduce himself & his painter, but he also gave me his business card in case I had any questions later. I know exactly what he is quoting on. Downside here, is that the flooring guys want to see the area from themselves before they'll say yes or no on the numbers that he told them he wanted to use. The only contact number they've got for me is my cell. Which they haven't called on. They claim to be unable to reach me. The builder hasn't had any trouble on the four occasions he's rung (once to set up the initial time, three to see if the flooring guy has rung yet).
I suspect that the first guy will put in a cheaper quote unfortunately.
I'd really like to have a kitchen I can use so that I can move back home....