Thread: A question of trust.

We are having a bathroom, toilet, and laundry makeover which will take about two weeks.

For most things, one of us can stay home whilst the tradies are working but Elisabeth wants to come with me to the surgeon to hear how my bowel cancer operation went and the results of the pathology, prognosis, etc. She doesn't trust me to remember what he says (and rightly so).

I was wondering what the general view is on leaving the house in the hands of tradies so we can go to the doctor or for coffee, shopping, etc.

I'm afraid I trust most people so occasionally I get screwed over (even by fellow forum members ).

I can see that people have have read my post in different ways so I had better tackle them in turn.

1. I'm not talking of being around to watch over them working. I keep well clear unless I have a specific question. Sometime the workers want to ask me something. However, that doesn't always work. As some will know, we had the house and garage reguttered late last year. Of seven gutters installed, only one (yes, 1) flowed the right way. The gutter blokes damaged my brand new pergola by hacking into it to install the gutters too far back so the roofing touched the outer edge of the gutters (see below). They had to come back three times to fix the gutters and I had quite a bit of repair work to do afterwards. I didn't trust them to fix what they had damaged. I would never recommend that gutter company to anyone.

2. Selecting the tradesman? Well, one selects the company to do the work, they bring in their tradies and subbies. I have no control over that. I'm using a bloke who does nearly all his work through a tile and bathroom place. He uses the same plumbers and electricians for all his work so I'm assuming he trusts them.

3. I don't want anyone to think I'm branding all tradies with a tag of untrustworthy. I'm not and I do trust them. I guess, in Sydney, we just feel uncomfortable leaving the house open while we go out. Oddly enough, when we lived on Norfolk Island, we used to leave the house unlocked. That has positives, too. I had to return to Sydney urgently when my wife was very ill. People gave up their seats on the plane so I could get on with my son (Elisabeth was in Sydney). When I got back to the Island, our house had been cleaned, washing done and ironed, beds made, lawns mown, and there was fresh fruit on the table. Even my car had been washed. Wonderful people.