Garden Make-Over
Sections in this Article:
Post-Mortem and Conclusions
Like all jobs, the devil's in the detail. After NESW had left we had an opportunity to have a deeper look. There were unfortunately a few surprises...
I had assumed the slate had been laid on a weed proof membrane (as per the quote). However, upon clearing slate from various areas we discovered some weed-proof membrane, some plastic packing sheet and in some places, nothing at all! So, while it looks good now, in the not too distant future, weeds would be protruding through the slate. Are these really professionals? I will now have to remove the slate and lay a membrane myself!
With young children likely to be running around bare-foot in the summer, I had to take a file to the sharp edges on the drain covers. It was potentially lethal in some places!
And while on the subject of the drain covers. What did I find when removing the drain covers, more broken gutters...
Two weeks after NESW had departed; I sourced some 'proper' weed proof membrane and began the laborious task of removing the slate to extract the plastic sheet and laying the proper membrane. I had no idea why NESW had done it this way; it probably saved them around £50! I guess if you want a job done properly, you’re better off doing it yourself!
Later I did question where Russell had sourced this 'Weed Proof Membrane'; Travis Perkin's apparently, but I can't see anything on their website that resembles what was laid - go figure, it must be me!
Threats
Several weeks later, I walked on the lawn for the first time and noticed that one, no, two, no, three; no; pretty much all of the coping stones had become loose! I knew that after our last exchange with NESW Building Services that they wouldn't be interested in resolving this issue, but after everything else, I made contact to make my point. The response was pretty much as expected with blame on us for the loose stones; "Someone or something walked on them before they set". I knew this was not the case, unless the neighbour's cat did! Russell informed me he wanted nothing more to do with us.
Having seen many photographs of our house promoting his work on sites such as ratedpeople.com, I said that I would share my own photographs of the build in the reviews. His response came as no surprise, and I quote, "It would be a mistake if I shared any of these photographs on any reviews". I quizzed him on what he meant by that and he replied, "It would personally be a mistake for me if I shared these photographs". I believe that was a threat; unfortunately, the conversation had moved from WhatsApp to a telephone call at this point and I am unable to evidence any of this.
I agreed that I would not share photographs on reviews on the condition that he removed all photographs of our build that he used to promote his business. He agreed and said he would delete them this evening (I will of course check over the weekend!). This does however lead me to question the point of websites like ratedpeople.com, bark.com and whoisbest.co.uk if people are intimidated in this manner as not to post negative reviews.
A full record will of course remain in this blog. Please leave comments below on what you think about all of this! Have you had a similar experience with NESW Building Services or any builder for that matter? Having spoken to my work colleagues, this kind of behaviour is unfortunately, all too common!
Conclusion
The garden was so much better than what we had before, so for this reason, NESW delivered but it wasn't to the quality we had expected and paid for! If was not for us keeping a careful eye on the team, the job would have been finished with many more issues. This was one of the positives of the Covid lockdowns, we were available to monitor the progress on a daily basis!
It was very evident throughout, that one of NESW's strategies was to find increasingly cunning ways to charge us for more; we'd also read this in some of the online reviews. Most of which we tried to avoid by getting as much detail defined in the original quote and for this reason, I beleive lead NESW to cut corners.
At best, NESW provided labour that I could not provide myself but the experience and the skills of some of his team was clearly not there. Russell project managed it reasonably well and ensured materials and equipment were available when needed, but towards the end there was clearly an attitude of getting the job done as cheaply as possible. When questioned on some of these short-cuts, we were told "This is how it's supposed to be", or, "This is the proper stuff". By the end of the job we simply had had enough and were glad to have the team off-site.
Would we use NESW again? - Not on your nelly! Would we recommend them? Hopefully after reading this article you can make your own mind up on that one!
Phase 2 of the build would the sourcing of a garden office; click here to see how Phase 2 went.
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