Patience...

One of the themes of this project has been that the best-laid plans don't always work out - and right now I'm feeling that acutely, but on a smaller scale.

I was really excited after we took the decision to focus more aggressively on finishing the construction. We immediately made a short-term plan: I would return to London on January 9th, and Andre would follow within a couple of weeks, so that by late January or early February we could get another big chunk of work done. Psychologically as well as practically, I'm really ready to see some more progress, since the last major milestone we hit was more than three months ago, when we got the heat working. Andre was here for two weeks in December, and he did a lot of work as usual, but it was mostly design, planning and prep work - obviously very necessary, but it didn't yield too many satisfyingly tangible results!

In terms of next steps, what we're working on now is getting the bathroom finished and tiled. We'll post about the build-out Andre did in December in a couple of days...

...But in the meantime, here we are in early February, and I'm still here on my own, and we haven't yet started our "Big Push". Happily, it's for a great reason: Andre's business has really picked up, and he's been manically busy in New York and unable to come here. Obvioulsy that's a very good thing, but here in London... well, they say that patience is a virtue.

As time goes by...

After a hugely stressful and incredibly intense nine months, it is hard to describe the sense of relief we feel in being able to take a more relaxed approach now that the roof is finished and the scaffolding is down. There's still so much to do - but at least we won't be feeling so pressured about the pace of work now.

Actually, there's so little pressure at the moment that we haven't done any work for a whole month and probably won't do anything else for the next month either. We're not intentionally taking such a long break; these periodic long gaps are mostly because André spends much of his time in New York, and when he's not here, everything grinds to a halt. Sometimes my own schedule plays into it too, though - I've just returned from New York myself, and next week I'm going on a business trip. Since I won't be back until early October, it doesn't really make sense for André to come here before then - which would make it almost two months since he was last here.

So, this is a big part of why we are still so far from finishing this flat - even though it's almost a year ago that we embarked on this project!

Although I've just noted that we'll enjoy being under less time pressure, we've realised that when we do resume work in a few weeks, we'll actually be confronted with yet another deadline of sorts: we better get cracking on installing radiators and getting the heat up and running before the cold weather sets in. In fact, we'll need to make absolutely sure that gets done during André's next two-week visit. We survived living here without heat last winter - but I don't really want to do it again!

Screwed

It's now definite: we have officially been left in the lurch in a very serious way.

André timed his trip here this time around the tentative dates that G.C. had given him. But there's no sign of G.C., and, as usual, we can't get hold of him at all. He's not responding to phone calls or emails...I don't think we can give him the benefit of doubt any more.

I can't imagine what would prompt a person to treat other people this way - I mean, if you're not going to follow through on something you said you'd do, fine...things come up, after all - but at least have the decency to TELL the person, please!?!

Anyway, no point in dwelling on how or why we're in this predicament, because the predicament is pretty bad, so we better focus on getting out of it. In short: we're going to have to figure out how to get this flat built, from scratch, entirely on our own. We're going to have to source all the materials and labour ourselves - and somehow figure out how to pay for it all, thanks to this unexpected turn of events.

Waiting For G.C.

We haven't been to fussed so far about the fact that André was having a hard time reaching G.C. He'd go silent for a couple of weeks, but then re-emerge with a reason for the silence. The first time, it was an illness in the family. Fair enough - everyone has their own problems to deal with, it was just (from our own purely selfish point of view) rubbish timing. But in any case, we are still dealing with the Party Wall Agreement, not to mention awaiting Planning Permission for our proposed design and the final structural drawings from the engineer - so we wouldn't have been able to start construction anyway.

But it happened again - another long silence from G.C., and then the excuse that he had been ill. Now, I'm always one to give people the benefit of the doubt... but this is starting to look extremely suspicious. It has been next to impossible to reach the guy for nearly two months now! And even when André does get him on the phone, he won't commit to any specific dates in terms of coming over to get things going. I'm really starting to think that there's something awry here - and I'm starting to lose my patience...

Waiting and Worrying

I'm starting to get nervous now. G.C., who is going to be leading the charge on all the construction work, told us last month that he would do the demolition work in September. But now we're halfway through September and there's no sign of him! André keeps trying to reach to him to get some exact dates from him, but he's suddenly become impossible to reach...

I guess I should explain. G.C. is a contractor/construction manager who André knows in NYC. When he heard that we were thinking of buying this flat, he volunteered to help us with the work. I was more than a little sceptical, but I guess the idea is that he's keen to do some more work in Europe. I was amazed that he actually came over to London - at his own expense - back in June, before we completed the purchase, to give the place a look over and give us a professional opinion about how much actual work would be required.

Anyway, I guess I'll hold off giving my two months' notice on the current rental flat until we have more of an idea what's going on with this guy...