Hi there,
We are in all senses of the word, renovation noobs! We hired a qualified builder with over 30 years experience to renovate our early 70's house.
After our initial excitement of finally being able to start (Victoria's lockdown started a few weeks after we signed the contract), 3 weeks in and the honeymoon is over!
This is Part 2 of my concerns, the second of many...
We asked for the kitchen wall to be knocked down to create open living into the family room. We were well aware that a supporting beam would be required (engineering/ draftsperson). When builders went up in the roof to start the works, they realized that the current beam was holding up the entire roof essentially, All beams/joists/ pieces of wood were attached to this on beam. They told us it would be a lot of work to put a new beam in inside the roof and hence get a seamless ceiling an tried to convince us to get a bulk head. We didn't want one, it was never in the plans or contract..so no!
Anyway, we got our way and they spent 2 days rejigging all the beams and the supporting beam was put in the roof. 3 days later we received an invoice for the extra work they had to do.
My question is, should the engineer ( who never came on site) be responsible, the draftsperson who did come on site or the builder who never once looked in the roof space or crawl space (another issue I will get to in another post) even though they had full access to both, be responsible? As far as we are concerned, we paid many people good money to work this out prior to contract signing.
Any advice would be great, tried calling consumer affairs to find out by rights but they won't take the calls.
Thank you!