Your Verandah

After having restored many verandah decks, I have had the pleasure this week of restoring one that was somewhat out of the normal circumstances.

You see Mr & Mrs Mcneil from Cremorne own a federation home. After having sought me online, their intention was  to re- tile the deck (6m x 1.2m) using Tessellated tiles with a Continuous Liverpool body surrounded by Windsor border, preceded first with slate bull nose threshold. I explained that the existing deck which had cracked & subsided over the last 80 or so years was unfit to work over again, anything else that would go over this would experience the same damage. I informed that 150mm needed to be removed to make way for  a new 100mm reinforced concrete slab then the tiling to be done over the top of this…. Guaranteed never to crack again.

Being then commissioned to do the work for them. I proceeded to excavate the 150mm of  this landing.. 100mm for the new concrete, 50mm for the tile bed with tiles. Normally the existing ‘stuff’ is resting on the original fill that the early builders had left there to work over. However as I began to jack hammer  I soon realised there was no fill underneath & that this platform was ‘suspended’ with nothing below. Ok..? so I continued to dig to find that the platform was being held up by 3 hardwood lintels with seasoned Oregon boards as the formwork… soon to realise that at least one third of this “formwork” had been eaten by white ants over the years….so what was holding the remaining up?.. air ? maybe the ants!.

This then changed everything. What then needed to be done was to remove the platform as planned, clean & dig up the dirt base till the original rock foundation was exposed. From here build 4 double brick walls to act as foundation for the new suspended deck which would be in Bondeck, then pour the new concrete & continue to finish the project.

Three hundred bricks were used for the foundation. If nothing was done to rectify this the landing would definitely have collapsed in time causing who knows what injuries to anyone who was on it at the time.

The project has taken 6 days to start & complete. It was a complete success. It looks awesome, the clients are happy, I am happy! And just for the record.. this deck will outlive the whole building!

Me and My Customers

HOO RAHH for websites & putting my ‘stuff’ out there!… Up until a couple of years ago all of my work has always been on recommendation & word of mouth. It was like these customers already knew me because they had already seen my work & had talked about me before we met. I loved it.. this system kept me busy & there was that trust factor already there.

It wasn’t until after years of badgering from my beautiful wife that I should advertise and build a website to promote my work. Not just turn up to do quotes with some crappy snapshots of samples of work that I had done.. “what’s wrong with what I’m doing?.. I’m working aren’t I?”.. What I was about to learn, was that there was a whole lot of opportunity out there to really discover how much I actually didn’t know about people.

Suddenly I was swimming in unknown waters, the potential customers who were now ringing me to look at their work knew absolutely nothing about me except for the photos on my webpage…which still aren’t all on there because I’m too slack! Lol I’ll get there… You see these new clients were asking me questions with a hint of scrutiny because they didn’t know me as I wasn’t recommended to them… They were ‘checking me out’ to see if I really knew my stuff..

What I found was that I have never felt under pressure. In fact it has been a growing experience I realize that I actually know more about this work than I have ever given myself credit for! As many of these clients have called on me ‘cold turkey’, I have found myself easing these people into my trust & developed strong ties & relationships with them as the project commences & works towards completion..

I’ve got to say that this new system has opened new doors for me. I now feel a different connection with my customers. I realize that there is always opportunity to learn and that I don’t for a second think that I might know it all. In fact, if a customer asks me a question about this stuff that I’m not sure of I’m always proud to respond with “I don’t know.. How about I find out?! “