Let’s ruin a new home

From the outset I would like to explain that we were not moving to a ruined castle, a pre-war tenement building or even a revitalised loft – but to an apartment only a few years old, in quite a good condition and built by a developer of repute. We somewhat euphemistically referred to the changes we were planning to make to the layout of the rooms as “cosmetic”. But it turned out that cosmetics can take different shapes and forms. The main roles in the macabre performance that lay ahead were taken by the members of the drilling and demolition team. The fact that they came from Góra Kalwaria, on Warsaw’s southern outskirts, should have raised my suspicions. There’s nothing wrong with the town itself; however, the word ‘Kalwaria’ means ‘Calvary’, bringing The Passion of the Christ to mind, a rather gory film that the lads with the pickaxes seemed to have stepped out of. These pickaxes were definitely worthy of the 21st century: shiny and electric, but operated with the grace of their mediaeval predecessors, reducing our gypsum walls to what looked like something that belonged to the stone age. All the craters and gouges they made in them – like Mariana Trenches across their surface – were grudgingly filled in, but this was accompanied by no end of griping: “The work is getting longer, the schedule is falling apart, other clients are waiting... problems, problems, problems! So some extra payment will be needed.” It soon turned out that ‘extra payment’ and ‘problem’ were the favourite words in the lexicon of the team manager – every day started and finished with a row about the “extra payment” necessary because of an unexpected “problem”. In terms of their demands and claims, these builders could easily be national champions – and I even started to sympathise with the EU commissioners pestered by everyone for additional funds.

Such rows were interwoven with semi-philosophical discussions that could have been titled ‘Does this REALLY need doing? (discuss)’. The classics of this genre also included the assurance (full of authentic fake- concern and given without batting an eyelid) that: “It would REALLY be better for you if it’s done by another team.” This was actually quite easy to believe. To make things worse, in a fit of temporary insanity, the team had also been given the electric wiring and painting work to do. The wiring, of course, required an “extra payment”, but they at least hired a genuine electrician, so we were spared any horrific deaths during the installation work and the sockets now have the right voltage. The painting work was carried out with the same care and unbounded enthusiasm as the demolition work. And with similar results: wobbly lines, uneven smoothing and with an unholy mess left behind. The ordeal took place despite the prior verification of the contractor, the signing of a contract stipulating the precise scope of the work and strict supervision of the work’s – if we can give it this name – progress. Fortunately, we came to our senses at some point and decided to resolve this burning issue by giving the renovations over to another contractor. Only thanks to this is it now possible to live in our nest, even though the evidence of the work of those cheerful boys with pickaxes will take a few years if not decades to put right. A few months down the road from these events, one reflection still disturbs me: how do companies that are responsible for thousands of square metres and hundreds of such “professionals” manage to work with the cowboys from Góra Kalwaria?