Work-in-Progress – Part 48 – Defects (V)

We had the project handover from the defect team yesterday afternoon, and were fortunate that our appointed interior designer was present to help us negotiate some parts of the outstanding issues. Our defect list was about two pages long and comprising around 40 items, though in some cases, items were generalized. E. g. an item like “Stains on key handles” actually meant several items for us.

Briefly, here’s the summarized outcome of a selected list of defects.

Green is good, orange is no good.
Green is good, orange is no good.

Numerous apartment units had little superficial issues with parquet flooring – e.g. light scratches, paint stains and the like. We noticed that the typical rectification method was to just re-sand and re-varnish the flooring again, which was what the defect workers did for us as well. We weren’t inclined to do a detailed check to see if each tile was hollow though, after reading about how risky/unsightly are the rectification methods for this, short of an entire floor replacement.

Item #2: The incomplete door signage was hilarious, but very tough to rectify as it required the specific subcontractor to return to redo our signage. The fellow should be coming later this week, so we expect that to be resolved quickly.

Item #11: There were still chips at the edge of the floor tiles at our yard toilet, which might accidentally cause feet injuries later if people rush in and out of the yard toilet. The defect workers did not like the idea of tile replacements again, so we agreed on a compromise – if the tiles could be rounded off, that would work as well for us.

Items #19 and #20: These were serious for us. We observed that other units had similar issues in their first defect reports; that there were very visible and ugly stains on the toilet seats. We didn’t think it was urine, but some sort of corrosive liquid. To be fair, the workers tried scrubbing the stains several times, and while the stains are less visible now, the seat surfaces now feel overly buffed down too. Ling was not going to risk having our bottoms sit on seats which had been scrubbed with god-knows-what cleaning agents, so told the defect team firmly that she wanted replacements for the seats.

Item #23: Should be easy to rectify. Basically, the on/off button on the power socket does not toggle properly, so we don’t know whether it’s on or off. OK, maybe a potentially dangerous defect after all.

Item #24: Got to wait for the Electrolux subcontractor to show up to rectify this! The defect team has been constantly badgering them though on our behalf.

So, we agreed to sign off seeing that the majority of the defects have been resolved, but also made a strong note of the outstanding ones, and followed through on correspondence on these very early this morning.

Our interior designer will be starting renovation work proper this Friday – more notes to come soon!