Closing Up

On completion of the Blue Roof we went on a hiatus for a year, simply to take a break from the pressure of chasing up with money and contractors to get the jobs finished. One thing that certainly put us off building was the astronomical quotes which were receiving for the subsequent stages of building. It clearly was a sign of contractors quoting us based on the belief that we wanted to complete the house as fast as we can, and they therefore wanted to take advantage of the urgency we showed in getting things done. In a space of 4 months we had raised the house from ground non-stop, only being delayed by the typical poor organizational approach of contractors.

Financially it also made sense to take a break, as the Kiwi Dollar had tumbled from the highs of 90 cents to USD to as low as 60 cents, and therefore waiting for the markets to stabilize whilst saving the few dollars made sense.  Ideally of course, it would have been good to just finish and get it over with. Sometimes things don’t always go that way.

Politically, there still Bvute Saga going on as well, which made it more so a point to worry though in our case, out plots where not affected by the shoddy deals, as everything was above board. We have the title deeds and all was done through the proper channels. At the end of the day, it still made sense again to just wait and see how the court case and the evictions of people from Crowhill would go ahead. Eventually it turned out the residents won the case, and as well, it was not our stands which were part of the saga. Still taking the year break from building was not a bad idea. You always need a clear head sometimes.

As such on resumption in December 2015, we started with searching for quotations. Immediate stages for consideration were, plumbing and materials, electricity and closing up the house with windows and exterior doors. Believe it or not, after having taken up the house to the level it was, it still was a daunting task to consider what was the next best activity to focus on given the external challenges around.

Ultimately, it made sense to consider closing up the house, and provide a bit of security to the house, before  moving on to installations inside the house. We have had heard pockets of small time burglary in Crowhill, and had been fortunate not to be a hit, despite having been one of the few households having development undergoing. “Touch wood”, they say it in Kiwiland, for such misfortune to befall you.

In essence closing up the house meant installing external doors, window frames and window panes. Similarly as has been a typical Zimbabwe style, we would receive a wide variation of quotations. A fix and supply quotation for aluminum joinery for the whole house, we were quoted from as low at USD 4000 including labour to as much as USD 8000.

According to our initial plan, the main front door was supposed to be hooden. At the time, due to the drive to want to close up the house, we opted for the main door to have an aluminium sliding door. Thus the aluminium doors were quoted for $300 each, inclusive. The windows were quoted as per their size with the large bedroom and lounge windows slightly more than the kitchen and the toilet windows (back end). All the joinery work was done on site, to suit to the openings that needed to be covered. At least this tended to be an advantage compaired to installing steel based window frames which normally requires welding. The aluminium joinery was a matter of cutting and bolting pieces of alumium frames.

In a space of a week by end of June 2016 , the contracted crew had finished the installation including windows. At that time in hindsight, what we failed to do which turned to be an issue latter was checking the weather tightness of the joinery. As that was not enough, given that the install was done prior to plastering the house, that turned out to be an issue as well, as the some of the windows mainly had not enough room to turn the knobs in opening them.