DOING THINGS BY HALF

 

Sheesh!

To do (something) by halves:

To do something half-heartedly or only partially.

I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country these days but up here tradesmen seem to be on 'island time'.

To begin with it's hard to get one to do a job whether it's plumbing, building or electrical work. Then trying to tie them down to a start date takes a lot of time and negotiation. Lastly, once they are on the job, keeping them at it when the sun is shining and the fish are biting is damn near impossible.

No matter what the job, after it's (almost) completed there will be some extra things that need finishing off, tidied up or even re-done. Good luck with getting the guy back.

Over the last year we've had some major plumbing done, significant building alterations, landscape gardening and fencing and some electrical maintenance. In each of these cases there's some follow-up work necessary. To date none of this has been done. We've had promises that became arrangements which in turn have been cancelled due to Covid, bad weather or the tradesman has simply forgotten.

A couple of weeks ago the major storms we've had caused a leak in the pelmet above the newly installed french doors in the bedroom. The builder was supposed to return to finish off the outside flashing but for numerous reasons the job has been put off. This time, when I called him it turns out that he's isolating with a form of Covid. Bummer. We'll just have to see if he turns up after that and that we don't get any more heavy rainstorms.

The garden landscapers did a good job with the front garden and installing the new wooden retaining wall but were supposed to return to finish laying bark and to re-fill the area with a big pile of dirt that they had temporarily removed and put at the top of the drive. This has been next to a big pile of bark and another of mulch that has gradually spread out a bit over the last few months. Robert's god only knows where the landscapers have got to - no, I know - Covid, other jobs, bad weather and, I guess, they've forgotten.

Today, as we've been having such a good day I decided to: remove the pile of soil and rocks and relocate it to the front garden; rake up and shovel into tidy piles the bark and mulch; cover these with tarpaulins and anchor them down with bricks; remove a whole row of agapanthus along the driveway that's been annoying me. Admittedly the agapanthus weren't the landscapers' problem. This exercise took about 20 barrow loads and 3 hours. I'm now buggered.