Renovations

Finding a Contractor

During the fourteen years that we have lived in Thailand we have renovated several condos here in Pattaya.
Each time we have to find a company to perform the work. We found that sometimes the larger firms were not interested in a small job around 50,000 baht.
We discovered this the difficult and frustrating way. How was that? When we called the prospective firm they would agree to come to inspect the site in order to give a quote. This is standard procedure. Enter the waiting factor. Make an inspection appointment and you will likely have to make another two or three after they don’t show up for the first second and third appointments. If they show up at all it will probably be several hours later than the time you agreed on and a day or two later. Not to fear not all firms operate like this.

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We just happened to encounter two or three operating under that peculiar policy.

Another Approach
One Friday with a computer generated drawing in hand my Thai partner contacted three glass and aluminium firms to quote on installing windows on the balcony of our condo. Each firm calculated that the job would take around three working days to complete but two firms could not begin the work for another three weeks.
When the drawing was presented to the foreman of a fourth firm in a nearby soi he calculated a rough quote on the spot. It was the most competitive and he could start work immediately. We were impressed with this and accepted his quote. He agreed to start the installation on Monday. On the Monday he arrived on time with another worker assistant. We were living in the condo at the time of the installation so he set up his cutting gear in the public hallway just outside our front door. He had quoted a time span of three days to complete the job so we thought we could cope with a little noise and clutter just outside our door for three or four days. At the time there were no neighbours living within 4 or 5 rooms from us. So there was no one else to bother. We were happy to see our window installer arrive and start the job on time.
On the first day the two men brought a pile of aluminium and dumped it on the balcony.
They did a lot of measuring, then, around midday began cutting the aluminium on the balcony. Some pieces they had to cut with their cutting machine in the hallway. Some how metal crumbs would stick to their boots and drop off creating a continuous path of metal crumbs from the hall through the kitchen and lounge to the balcony. This was ok we swept two or three times a day and as informed knew it would last only three days. Their work space was beginning to over flow into the lounge room. No problem we could handle that discomfort for a short time. They made reasonable progress by midday the second day but we could see that it would probably take four days not three to complete the job. On that second day they went to lunch at noon but didn’t return until 5pm. On returning they gathered their tools and advised us that they would return at 9am the next morning.
The next morning they arrived at 10am after spending an hour at the factory supervising the start of the making of the sliding window frames. When they wanted to leave our room at midday to have lunch this time we offered to provide lunch for them. We thought this might keep them on the job. The foreman turned down the offer but then we noticed that the young assistant had brought a packed lunch with him and he stayed.
By 2 pm the foreman hadn’t returned from lunch and we discovered that his assistant could not carry on with any work until the foreman returned. This was the assistant’s first job ever and he had worked with the firm for only one week. At 4.30 pm the foreman finally returned and worked for one hour then, as he did the second day, packed his tools and left. This schedule was repeated for a further three days making a total of eight days including a weekend. Weekend work is prohibited in the condo.

Our room was a mess and we were not sure when the job would be finished. On the ninth day the foreman adopted the same schedule two hours work in the morning then gone. We were getting stressed by this dragging out of the work program. My Thai partner decided to report this behavior to the manager of the firm.

Caught In The Act
This action unveiled a messy situation. The manager and owner of the firm were unaware that our installation was being done by the firm. The foreman was supposed to be working on some other installation about 10 km from our condo. He was now busted!
The manager promised to reprimand the foreman for his wrong doing and set the schedule in order.
This gave us a great sense of relief. Then on the tenth day the foreman and his assistant did not show up on our job. We were deflated and pissed off. After several phone calls we were informed that the foreman was off sick. Being busted must have been too stressful for him. “Could you send someone else?” we asked hopefully. We were told we would just have to wait until the foreman recovered. Two days passed and at midday on day thirteen of the installation we received a phone call from the foreman asking if it would be convenient to continue the job the following day. Luck we were at home then to receive this important call. Disregarding the fact that it would have been more convenient had the job been finished to the proposed three or four day schedule we accepted the offer. The window installation was completed after a further four days making a total of 15 working days. But to that time span we must add two weekends making a grand total of 19 days almost three weeks of hell.

In Contrast:
We needed a similar job performed on another condo. No we didn’t give the job to the same company. This time we found a private installer in our soi. His name is Jung. He quoted three days to complete the job at slightly less than the cost of the previous job mentioned above.

Jung completed the installation on time. Three weeks later we had a heavy storm and lots of rain fell. The day after the storm we received a telephone call from Jung inquiring if there were any leaks that needed fixing.We were happy that he called and were even happier to give him the good news “No leaks”. We have since used Jung on several occasions and recommended him to friends. His work is professional and he has a good work ethic. Jung is now one of the members of the work pool listed in Pattaya Promise e-book.