Too late for Tuscany?

Give me just a little more time

Well this isn't exactly how Alberto phrased it, at this weeks telecon, but he should have, as it took me the best part of an hour grinding through other points before we got onto the schedule, and after a couple of leading questions he finally blurted out that maybe the job would take an extra month!

An extra month? this is the man, that on the first time we met said we would be in by Xmas, and the same man that insisted to put an end-date of 31st March in the contract, even when we questioned the sensibility of it.  Now don't get me wrong, as sure as Alberto was to hitting this target, I was also sure it was the one thing (of the 3 basics) that I was willing to compromise on, but only upto a point.  I would therefore have hoped for him to opt for an interim 1 or even 2 week delay, but no, straight in with an 18% overrun to programme, which means that he's used up all his lives in one go, as end of April is already almost Summer (well if you don't take into account summer 2008 in Tuscany, which was very late coming), and we definitely want to be 'making hay' in Italy this summer.

Apart from putting the Margarita's back on ice for another month, what else does a time delay usually mean? you got it, more money, as more time on the job, means more people on the job, and those guys need to be paid, QED.  Of course, if this was fixed price contract then extra time wouldn't be a problem (well actually it would if you had to pay financing charges on a loan), but it seems that fixed price (a corpo in Italian), is not how things are done in Italy, as only 2 of our 29 jobs in the contract are fixed, totalling a measly 2% of the scope, and according to the latest Contabilita, they've even invoiced me a higher price for a supposed fixed price job (that's my first question to Alberto at our next session).

As Chicken House project is not my day job, I've been tinkering with a project schedule (in MS Project software), not the easiest of tools for a novice, nor the cheapest, but if you use it regularly as I do, its not rocket science.  So, of late, I've been updating the schedule more frequently, but retrospectively from seeing progress in photo's, definitely not ideal, and not something they teach in project manager school (today we are going to do 20/20 hindsight planning, not), but I was hoping that sooner rather than later Alberto was going to hit me with his plan, even a hand drawn one would be good, but no.  So I think this Monday's chat is the time to unveil my plan, and get him to pin down on some dates for the remaining work, er, lets start with the windows.  To help this go more smoothly, I've even put the plan into Italian, I hope it works.

And what about Quality? well that's one thing I won't compromise on, especially as I have heard so many tales of how good workmanship in Tuscany is.  So even if they overrun that extra month, we are not going to give an inch on Quality. Ciao

Back To Basics

After our B-movie road trip, 2 things this week have triggered a back to basics on Chicken House project.  The first was the arrival of the latest invoice from the builders.

Projects, by their very nature are unique, 'one-offs', and as such they can be broken down into 3 main constituent parts, ie Time, Cost & Quality; of course there are other things to consider, but look after these 3 key points and most of your troubles are solved, it is also safe to say, that if any one (or god forbid 2), go wrong, then you are going to compromise one or the other of the other constituent parts.

So, the invoice hit my in-box the other day; and I think I have a good idea how much money is in the bank, I also have a cash-flow forecast for this job, but I was just niggled that I hadn't actually checked the figures for a while.  So at 10pm I sat down to re-check my sums, mark those items that had been paid, and moved back the predictions of when other bills may arrive.  A good example is the carpenter, Alessandro, we saw him in August, made a deal, and agreed that windows should be installed before the bad weather came (ie around November).  No way, its now mid-February and still no sign of a new casement going anywhere near that house, so every month since November I have moved the Carpenters expected bill one square to the right on my spreadsheet.

In order to make sure that the work invoiced had actually been completed , I asked Alberto for an updated 'schedule of works' (in Italian, Contabilita), which is basically the builders original quote, marked up with prices for work done, so if he quoted to do 20m of plastering at 30 euro/m, and delivered 22m, then the final price was 60 euro higher than his estimate.  This then necessitated another new spreadsheet, to better analyse each of the tasks (there are 29 in total on the builders quote), to assess what has been done, at what cost (compared to the estimate), and how much work is yet to be started.  

This little exercise showed that planned work to date has risen by 3%, as whilst some jobs have come in under the budgeted figure, others have wildly exceeded the original numbers.  This 3% increase is pretty good in projects, especially one as woolly as Chicken House, but only two-thirds of the scheduled work has so far been completed, so does that mean the final overrun will be 5%?  This of course is only increases in planned work, if you recall back in November, I asked that they remove and replace all the floors with original-type cotti, an immediate additional 3% to the builders pay packet, and the fiasco with ENEL, cost me a few hundred euro's for the builder to chase-out stonework to get the cables in, and there are other items creeping into the scope.  It seems that cost management will continue to be a top priority on this project for some time , especially after Alberto's confession at our last catch-up call.  buona fortuna

The Longest Day

Valentine's Day dawned bright and sunny, and we were on the road early, as we had a 'lunch-date' in Toscana, unfortunately it was only with Alberto and the builder.  We covered the 400-plus kilometres in good time (there is now a new road bypassing Venezia, which cuts out 2 toll-booth stops), and even arrived in advance of our deadline, to allow us to take in the changes first hand, before the crew arrived.  I've said it before, but the new ceilings & beams are fantastic, and the pictures we were sent don't do them justice.

Before too long, we were joined by a tanned Alberto fresh from his ski-trip, and we set about going room to room checking progress and ironing out questions.  I had gone prepared by printing out checklists of points to solve, one sheet per room, both in English & Italian, as I wanted to make sure that me and Alberto recorded the same actions, I even included in his info-pack a set of all the latest drawings, which was invaluable, as time after time he questioned if I had moved the radiator, changed my mind about lights etc, even the opening of the doors was well debated, as my solution was deemed un-Italian, but on this occasion, that old maxim 'the customer is always right' prevailed.  The intended colour of the now sandblasted beams was also a talking point, and one which I expected some deep-set ideas, but both Alberto & Chiasserini wanted to leave them light, contrary to popular urban myths about Tuscany.  We eventually ended up in the bathroom, and Alberto couldn't resist launching straight into why WCs should be installed as it had been, but we got over that little issue quickly and moved on to other more interesting items, such as how many ceiling tiles would we have to remove to squeeze a builder into the roofspace to fit the much-needed insulation (appropriately, as there was still snow on the ground outside), we also had a good chat over one beam that was almost eaten away by woodworm, contrary to Alberto's previous advice that its not a problem in Tuscany.

The site meet took a good 2 hours, and with the wind howling through the open window holes, it was getting chilly, and everybody had their own dew-drop, but as Alberto left, the electrician arrived for our 2nd meeting of the day.  This was no less productive, but thankfully quicker, with our sparky (Andreas) bringing his own copy of drawings, as well as a can of spray paint to leave his moniker exactly where he was to position lights/sockets etc.  The only tricky point was my desire to fit electrical towel rails in the bathroom, which he felt infringed Italian regulations as being too close to water.  What a stupid mistake!,  I foolishly thought that an electrical device designed for bathrooms would be sufficiently protected for that environment.  Luckily I had taken them with me, so Andreas went on his way promising to re-check the rule book and come back to me later.

The next job was to offload the van at the plumber's warehouse, which amazingly was only at the end of the road (via Tiberina), the benefit of having another of Alberto's friends on our project. Thankfully the unloading took a damn sight less time than the loading, and we were all done in half an hour. The fun wasn't over, as Chiasserini had arranged for us to meet him at a local tile showroom in San Giustino, see www.cottodeglietruschi.it

Once there the young, English speaking assistant, Riccardo ably demonstrated the different colours, treatments and effectiveness (with the aid of a bottle of  water), of the various cotti treatments, so much so that we were finally able to have confidence that our choice of natural look tiles, all adequately sealed was the right decision, and Chiasserini got the message from the horses mouth.

It was already dark as we made our way from the shop and up the hill to Karin's place (www.casaspertaglia.it) checked ourselves in and got a good fire going.  It wasn't too long until the lady herself put in an appearance and our real Valentine party got underway, with the help of a few of Karin's friends, a couple of bottles of (pink) bubbly and some fine regional cooking from our hostess.  All too soon, we had to excuse ourselves, as tomorrow was another long day trip back, and the driver at least needed some beauty sleep.  Again on that trip we were to have cop trouble (Italian this time), but that's another story. Ciao

 

Lock, Stock and 2 Bathroom Suites

It's almost a week now since we returned from our latest whirlwind weekend trip to Tuscany, to deliver all of our bathroom equipment, and as the pain of the road trip subsides, its time to commit the memory to the blog.  If you are sitting comfortably, then I'll begin...

Before we could go anywhere, we first had to load our transport of delight, a very battered Opel Vivaro mini-bus, without the rear seats for extra load carrying, with an absolute cornucopia of items, enough to keep plumbers and builders busy for the foreseeable future without complaint.  Luckily (for my back at least), Mrs J's brother had accepted an invitation to see Tuscany first hand, little did he know how hard he would have to work for his free-passage.

First things in were the radiators, a good 600kg laid on the floor of the van, then in stages we piled on more, sounds straightforward, but all of this kit was kept on the 7th floor, so had to negotiate several fire doors, and a lift ride to get it to the basement garage.  So in went the infamous bath, shower cubicle and trays, numerous toilet pans, bidet, lots of taps, I even threw in the wood stove for good measure (whats another 70kg between friends), and to top it all off we packed the 24 boxes of tiles in and around all the other kit.  Each box of tiles weighs ~20kg (only 5 tiles to a box!), and having already moved these upstairs once I had bought a few days earlier a nifty little sack truck (max load 175kg), sadly it must have been a typo, 'cos even with only 4 boxes loaded it was in severe danger of breaking, and each successive trip to the basement put an extra bend in the load pan.

Anyway, a sweaty hour later we were loaded up, with I guess about 1.4Te of goodies, plus our 3 svelte bods, easily exceeding the Vivaro's claims for loading, but at least there was a healthy gap between the wheels and the arches.  A quick check of the anti-freeze in the water wash, for the mountain trip, and we were off.

Even though there was an imminent threat of snow the weather was good and we were soon into our Austrian-Autobahn-stride, when we came upon a Polizie-Aktion, whereby the local traffic cops diverted all traffic off the highway into a holding area, but only seemed to hold onto those vehicles that were non-Austrian.  So we kicked our heels for nigh on 20 minutes with Hungarians, Poles and others, whilst the diligent cops checked to make sure 'our papers where in order' (very James Bond-ish).  When he finally reappeared, he casually remarked 'was I on my way to UK?', at the time I thought it was a crazy question, as we were on the Sud-Autobahn, ie going south, whereas UK was NorthWest, in hindsight perhaps it was his attempt at humour. 

The rest of our trip was thankfully uneventful, with the sun shining, roads dry and definitely no snow, it was a distinct change since the last time I drove that road (en-route to Venice in Jan 2008), when it snowed like crazy, temperatures were -10 deg C and the washer bottle froze solid, forcing us to stop in Graz and get it sorted (hence my precautionary check before we set off, once bitten etc).  Life in the van was cosy, with 3 adults upfront, and a tonne of stuff in the back, oh, and no music system apart from the cheapest of radio's and a tape player! In the days of MP3 who uses tapes anymore, obviously Van designers are a bit behind the curve on entertainment matters.  This closeness resulted in more than usual 'comfort breaks' (to stretch legs), and a constant wariness from me that with a hefty load of cast iron and porcelain behind me, braking needed the foresight of a supertanker captain.

As we set off late, we never intended to make it one non-stop trip (as we usually do), but to stay at a B&B somewhere over half-way.  We did this in November to good effect, so, once again Casa Renata, just off the Udine-Sud exit was our home for the night.  We had spent some time in the centre of Udine in August 07, and we loved the place, especially a little Trattoria we found, and I would have liked to repeat the experience, but with all of our goodies onboard, our chosen bed for the night had the added advantage of a securely gated compound with the bonus of popular local pizzeria just a stones throw away.  So with tummies full of quattrostagione and Chianti we dreamed of how Chicken House would have changed since we were last there, and tomorrow's site meeting. Buona Notte

On the road again

Alberto is still skiing but we are making plans to haul all of our plumbing goodies to Tuscany, to get the plumber back to work, and for a site meeting this weekend, hopefully the snow will hold off (as we have to go over/thro' the mountains) for our drive.  We have so much stuff we will need a van, but here is a pic of the car full with a tonne of radiators. 

Groundhog Day - Italian style

I know it was on Sunday that Punxsutawney Phil had his annual 15 mins of fame, but things this week are repeating themselves on Chicken House too.  In fact things may be turning more into 'Lost in Translation' than 'Groundhog Day'. 

After my little rant to Alberto yesterday (nothing compared to Christian Bale's outburst this week), I got a conciliatory reply this afternoon, saying that the plumber had been stood down, and that it was usual to place toilets nearest the wall in Italy, (despite me sending him a drawing over a month ago showing the opposite), so why didn't he tell me of such conventions then?.

In order to diffuse any permanent damage I was straight onto Alberto & VP to sort out another telecon asap, let's call it an extraordinary-meeting, as we rarely get to talk weekly as first planned, now we will have two in as many days.  So we agreed on tomorrow at the usual time, and I'm already preparing my questions, I just hope the plumber is not in attendance, otherwise we risk getting derailed a second time.

After yesterdays debacle, we went out and did a bit of retail therapy, buying a lot of expensive cast iron, tonight we did the same, and finally went to put the money down on some bathroom tiles.  As previously explained, it seems that great Italian tiles are cheaper here than in their homeland, that's the craziness of a global economy, and to make things even better they are currently on 40% discount, how good is that? so, at that price we decided to kit out the small bathroom as well, as we couldn't get the cheaper tiles we had picked out for that discounted rate.  Of course there is always a drawback, we wanted 20 sq metres, and the store only had...... 20 sq metres! we bought them anyway, and then ordered a further 2 metres as a contingency, but these won't come for a further 3 weeks.  Mamma mia 

Do you want the good news? or the bad?

Today was a real mixed bag of emotions, which actually started 6pm CET yesterday, ie that's when Alberto and my diaries coincided and we eventually got to catch up on the house, the first time in nearly 2 weeks, and as if there wasn't enough to get thro', our translator (VP) could only stay 30 mins, when I thought we could easily talk for more than a hour.

It started bad, when Alberto announced that he also had the plumber with him (so that was my list of questions out of the window immediately), and we launched into questions on where I wanted the tap in the garden (answer: its in the specification), and then onto the orientation of the loo and the bidet (answer: its on the drawing), and then onto the size/location of the radiators (answer: its in the document I emailed about an hour ago). If there is a repetitive theme in this story, I apologise, but with minutes ticking down my fuse was getting shorter than usual.  We finished on a few upbeat notes, again asking Alberto to send me some pics of the sandblasted beams, and only 10 minutes overrun on our agreed 30 min slot.

I came off the phone only slightly aggrieved that my meeting had been hijacked, but happy that a few key points had been restated and reinforced.  That euphoria lasted until this afternoon, when I got a 6Mb zip file with a dozen pics of the latest works.  The first few absolutely lifted me, showing how well the old timbers had come up after the sandblasting, some of the photo's even showed that the plasterers had done the business and had almost fully finished the first coat of render. 

On about pic 6 or 7 it started to get more interesting, with lots of big blue and grey plastic piping laid about various rooms.  So, the plumber had actually started. Then wham! the next shot was of the main bathroom, and blow me down, he had installed the hidden flush system for the loo and bidet mounting, AND they were in the wrong place! I just could not believe it. To add insult to injury I must have told Alberto  dozen times that I already have all the equipment to be installed, so what was the plumber doing fitting his own kit? I was foaming at the mouth.  So much so I dashed off a quick note to Alberto (via translator), telling him to swap WC/Bidet back again, remove his kit, and tell the plumber to stop work until I can get there with all the bits and pieces, and go over the installation (even tho' it is in the drawings etc).

When I'd calmed down a bit, we went straight out to buy the much discussed radiators, and the good news was that they had them in stock, the bad news was, not the exact size I wanted.  A quick executive decision, and we were the proud owners of about 1 tonne of new cast iron radiators.  When I showed the guy that they were to go in the back of my car (and not a truck), his face was picture, but with a few of his mates, and some brute force, in they went.  I must say the rear springs on my car were severely tested as we drove home very slowly, a little reminiscent of our great journey across Europe last year.  Getting them out of the car was a hoot, (as there was only me), with each radiator weighing at least 150kg, but with the appliance of science, I did the job in double quick time, and still came away with all my fingers and toes.

Since then, I've been checking my mails regularly and still no retort from Alberto, I'm hoping he'll just say 'OK, no probs', anyway I'm still looking to fix our next trip to Toscana in the very nearest future.

Today's problems put my cotti dilemma in the shade, by the way, the answer is: you can ask for 3 types of finish, ie matt, satin or glossy.  QED. Ciao Amici