Call Security!

The last two or three weeks saw quite a bit of activity; between the plasterer’s team and the electrician’s team, there were instances of up to six workers simultaneously. A stark contrast from going days or weeks with no tangible progress.

 

A lot of work has been done on the interior walls, namely the patching up of wall trenches* where the electricity pipes were installed, some ad hoc touchups here and there on the limestone and just sanding the walls down. Our plasterer told us that they typically leave the bottom couple of rows until after the tiles are laid, in case they’re impacted during works. Fair enough. At least no more cutting up of the walls!

 

Or so I thought.

 

A few days later, the representative from the home security company which we engaged comes to start passing their cables for the doorbell, intercoms, sensors and cameras. You see, way back when our electrician first started, the representative had come onsite to explain what needs to go where, so that PVC pipes are prepared for them to then come and simply pass the cables through.

 

Well, he came, and not everything was exactly up to par. “This sensor needs to move here, there’s a missing one here, these sockets need to be square, not round, the pipe for this camera is on the wrong side”, etc. About a dozen items that needed to be addressed before they could do anything.

 

This is one of the challenges of dealing with contractors who are in turn dealing directly with each other. Some things are not communicated clearly, others are forgotten, some are based on incorrect assumptions. Even though that day really sucked, I can laugh about it now. Yes, we had to pass new channels through the walls, and even undo some of the recently-done plastering, but the electrician did us a solid and completed what needed to be done in a day, and a week later the security cables were installed without further hesitation, ready for when the devices are eventually brought in. No harm done, no bad blood.

A fresh wall, with an even fresher cut.

 

I was worried about the plasterer’s reaction to this little mishap. But apparently, this stuff happens all the time.

 

I even drew the shape on the wall to make sure we got it right the second time round. My kinder teacher would be so proud.

*I’m sure that’s not what they’re called, I don’t know how else to describe them. In Maltese Gozitan they’d tell me “nagħmel trinka”, Google translates “trinka” to “trench”, I didn’t feel like digging (get it?) into it further, so there you go.