Saturday 29 November 2014

"Fillergate"

On every project there are times when quite simply things do not go to plan. What we have dubbed "Fillergate" is one of them.

When Yannis' concreting team had finished working on the main structure of the house and everything was cleared up it was great to see my vision for how the inside of the house would look realised.

The plastic filler pieces for the bolt holes holding the sheets of shuttering in place needed to be removed, the bolt holes themselves filled and then the resulting holes filled with a contrasting cement render. My assumption here was that it would be highly unlikely that the over 800 bolt holes could be consistently blended with the concrete. Hence a contrast was the best option.
In addition to the bolt holes there were a number of places where marks on the walls and ceilings needed to removed, some gouges and divots in the concrete that needed filling with a cement mix that was close to the concrete colour and a few sharp corners repaired and smoothed.

A team was carefully instructed to fill and finish the bolt holes and a specialist brought in to repair the corners and fill the major divots etc.

Well what ensured was a disaster. When I arrived at the site I immediately felt a distinct atmosphere between the bolt hole team and the specialist. In all the different teams previously working on the site nothing like this had happened.

What I found was that the colour used by the bolt hole team was drying much lighter than the test sample that I had agreed to for covering the bolt holes and the specialist was working with a white filler mix. See the results below. It seems the guy leading the bolt hole team refused to give the specialist filler guy any of the dye to mix with the white cement base so he worked on using the white mix!!!

I despaired. How could such a mess be made of the lovely simple concrete walls? Work was stopped. Eventually I was reassured by the engineer and the project manager that the situation could be retrieved. Albeit with a lot of extra work and delay to the project.

The specialist, Tikos, was charged with sorting it out and would clear issues directly with me as I was visiting the site daily whilst this work continued.

The main room after the concreting team had finished and cleared up. Just the look I wanted but needing a bit of cleaning up and sanding of any major rough concrete edges.

What greeted me when I went up to the site to see how things were going!!!


The team( Yannis and Tikos) tasked with restoring my dream.

The first area to have the bolt hole filled and coloured.

The nature of casting the ceiling required some serious sanding.

With the ceilings tidied to my satisfaction Tikos seals them with a transparent breathable seal.

The walls now are looking as I envisioned. Note, as well, the very neat electrical wiring in conduits and the floor level air vent for the future masonry stove.