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Window On Another World

November 19, 2008 in Living in Spain by Paul Allen | No comments

The blind man came yesterday. Or should I say the man to fix the security blind that covers our patio door.

 

We’re on first name terms, José and I. Not surprising, given the number of times he’s had to come to our house in the four years we’ve been living here.

 

He must have fixed that blind at least half a dozen times. This time it had come off the roller on one side and jammed half up. Lucky really, as on previous occasions it’s got stuck when all the way down, leaving the lounge shrouded in gloom and forcing us to climb through the window if we want to get out onto the patio. Fortunately we only had to wait three days for José to show up this time around too.

 

While he was here he mended the kitchen window as well, as it keeps sagging on its hinges, making it almost impossible to open. It’s only about the fourth time he’s had to sort that one out though, so I shouldn’t complain.

 

As for the window in our daughters’ bedroom … well, that’s another story.

 

We’d asked about it while the house was still under construction. One day, while visiting the site to check on progress, we found the builders about to install the windows. There would be a tilt-and-turn one in the kitchen, and another in the downstairs bathroom.

 

“Could we have the same mechanism in the second bedroom?” we asked.

 

The architect, developer and the head of the building firm consulted. “No, it’s not possible,” we were told. The frame was too small to support its weight, they said. Being ignorant of such matters, we shrugged our shoulders.

 

Eventually the house was finished – two months late, so six months early by Spanish standards – and we moved in. But the sliding patio door locks kept breaking (too much weight on the door for too flimsy a lock it turned out), so we called José back in … six times.

 

During the course of one of his visits I pointed to the kitchen window. “Is it possible to have the same mechanism in the bedroom upstairs?” I asked.

 

“Of course,” he replied. “I just need to add a piece to the top of the frame.”

 

I explained to him what I’d been told about the frame being too small. He shook his head. Nope, complete rubbish. It would cost me about 50 euros to get it changed though. Ah, that explained why the developer had said no.

 

So José said he’d come round and sort it out. Which he did, several weeks later. He took the window off its hinges and returned to his workshop to add the necessary pieces. A couple of hours later he was back, as promised. Unfortunately, he could only put on one piece of the necessary mechanism, he explained. They were missing the other bit, but he’d order that and return to install it as soon as it arrived. It would take ten minutes to do.

 

We waited. I called and left a message with his secretary. A few weeks later I ran into José in a local shopping mall. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’ll give you a call and come round in a couple of weeks.”

 

We waited.

 

I called again and left another message.

 

A little while after I bumped into José in town. “I’ll come one day this week,” he told me. “I’m not sure which, but I’ll call and let you know.”

 

We waited.

 

I called and left a message. I went up to the factory. José had popped out but would be back in five minutes. Could I come back then?

 

I returned half an hour later. José was still out. I talked to his dad, who owns the business. He’d speak with José when he returned and get him to come see me.

 

We waited. I called and left a message with the secretary. Nothing.

 

It’s now two years since José first came to change the window. So I took the opportunity while he was fixing the blind to ask him if there was any progress on the missing part for the bedroom window. I should have known better.

 

José shook his head sorrowfully. Unfortunately, he told me, the guy who manufactured the pieces has gone out of business (which hardly came as a shock).

 

The good news though is that over the last decade José has installed the same style of window in many other houses around town. So all we have to do now is wait for one of them to be knocked down or have their windows changed and he can nab the missing piece we require.

 

Shouldn’t take too long, I figure. Another five years or so and I’m sure we’ll have it sorted.

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Housing Woes Abroad

September 5, 2008 in Living in Spain by Paul Allen | No comments

I see on the Expat Focus forum that ITV wants to make a new series investigating the housing woes of Brits abroad: people with builder horror stories, planning permission nightmares and the like.

 

It is a common lament among expatriates. Virtually every ‘move abroad to a rustic farmhouse’ book to have appeared in recent years (Under the Tuscan Sun, Driving Over Lemons, The Olive Farm, you know the type) seems to be filled with their renovation disasters, as if it’s a prerequisite for publication.

 

Wary of facing similar reconstruction nightmares, my wife and I opted instead to buy a new-build house when we moved to Spain. Little did we know what hassles it would produce.

 

For starters, the house was two months late in completion. Not bad really, by Spanish standards. Unfortunately, that also meant we had a house signing and new baby within two days of each other. Far from ideal.   

 

And very soon after we found there were problems with rising damp (in the house that is, not the baby). Fortunately, it has been rectified by the developer … although it was interesting that they used a Dutch company to resolve it!

 

Irony of ironies though, the workman who came to inject the damp-eradicating solution into our walls also managed to drill into one of the central heating pipes at the same time. As a result, when we put the heating on later in the year all the water from the boiler flooded out of the broken pipe and under our kitchen floor, further soaking the walls and requiring another workman to demolish half our kitchen in search of the leak. It was like living through the Flanders and Swann song, The Gas Man Cometh.

 

And we’re not the only ones to have suffered. In a nearby block of apartments built by the same developer they couldn’t even get the floors level. As a result, everything tips at an angle or slides towards the corners, something not as easily fixed.

 

Then there are all the horrific tales in the press of people’s houses in other parts of Spain being demolished because they’ve been built without planning permission, or across a right of access.

 

All this may be stereotyping the Spanish building trade. But stereotypes have to come from somewhere.

 

And it’s not as if the actual skills of the workmen are any less good than you’d find elsewhere. Many of the ones that have come to our house – and we’ve seen legions – have been knowledgeable and proficient.

 

This is just a guess, but I put it down instead to time pressures. Basically, during the boom time there was too much money to be made, and buildings needed to go up too fast, for the individual workmen to spend the time needed (and probably they’d like) on doing a bang-up job. The upshot was corners got cut.

 

So while surveys in Spain may not be the norm, and no doubt the estate agent will tell you it’s not necessary, if you’re going to buy a property here get one done. It will save you a lot of money and a ton of angst further down the road.

 

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