I think you’ve probably read bits and pieces on my Dayre already but recently we had to do a lot of maintenance on our house.

This is our renovation story.

Two years ago we bought a house here.

So pretty right? 😀

We never moved in though.  The house has four bedrooms and we thought it was way too big for us (I think Fighter wasn’t  born yet or was just only born.)  We continued to live in our apartment and rented it out to a nice guy whose name is interestingly nearly the same as mine WTF only a few letters different hahaha.

He moved out in July so we wanted to do a once-over maintenance round on the house before letting out to a new tenant.

Also cos the house wasn’t without its problems aih.

Take this for example. This photo just makes me want to stab myself.

Shit la!!! I tell you angry or not?

A few weeks before they moved out, the tenant informed me there was a leak or something and it was affecting the wall in the master bedroom.  He sent me a photo and I saw some faint brown marks on the wall.  I thought ok no biggie I’ll just fix it after they leave so I don’t trouble them with the dust and whatnot.

Two weeks later I went over to see for myself and got the shock of my life.  Damn brown marks morphed into the monster that ate my wall????????????

It’s horrific la! My house suddenly looks haunted!

*unearthly scream*

OMG the ghost appear already! No la this is actually the contractor HAHAHAHA. We have a usual contractor who we call for simple maintenance work around our place, but this time he was so busy and  business so good he bo chup me. So I enlisted the help of Kaodim.

Kaodim is a website/app that connects customers and contractors.  You just fill out a simple form with your details and what kind of services you’re looking for and contractors can submit a quote based on your needs.

And the quotes are free!

You can look for all sorts of vendors and contractors – from renovation and repair to movers, cleaners, even photographers and wedding planners.

Using this service really takes away a lot of the inconvenience!  Everyone complains about their contractor so I don’t even know where to look for a new one.  So I might as well look based on who can give me the best price, and Kaodim opens me up to their database of vendors.

So I got the quotes and then arranged with four contractors to come and look at our house then give me a quote.  Then I just picked the best price.

Besides the horrible leak in the wall, I had a bunch of other problems.

Window sealant had melted (?) away so rain water was seeping in and ruining the window sills. T_____T  In ALL the bedrooms.  And the living room. *black faced

The master bathroom ceiling was leaking too.  Until water dripped onto the floor like this OMG.

Various marks on the walls which needed to be erased/painted over.

And omg my beautiful bathroom cabinets. T_______T They were one of the design reasons why I liked the house in the first place and they were basically destroyed.  They are made of simple plywood and when our tenants used the sinks, the water dripped down and warped the plywood. -_______-

I went over the problems with the contractor, Mr A.  He told me the leak in the wall was rainwater coming in from the roof and they would be able to fix it.  There were also some hairline cracks in the walls which he promised to patch up and give a fresh lick of paint.

As for the bathroom cabinets, we have no plans to move in yet so instead of replacing, we opted for a quick fix – to repaint the cabinets so they’d be more water proof.

After the works were completed, the contractor informed me. We were leaving for London then so I didn’t have time to go to the house yet to check. But because we wanna find a tenant soon, I informed our management about it told them to go ahead and show people the house.

When we were in UK, we received an ominous email wtf.  The manager told us our house was in terrible shape and it wasn’t doing us any favors when he brought viewers.

WHAT! NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DONE ALREADY MEH?

We got back and the next day I went right over to the house.

There were paint buckets, brushes, newspapers, and tools all over the place.  It looked like a work in progress.  An abandoned work in progress.

Headed upstairs to the master bedroom and saw this.

A puddle by the door jamb and warped flooring. *combusts*

Stepped in to the room and this is what I saw. A huge new leak above the door!!!!

The leak was so bad the water dripped down the walls and pooled on the floor OMFG *pulls hair out

Wasn’t the leak supposed to have been fixed!?

The window sills weren’t done either!

The workers had dripped paint all over my stairs and forgot to clean it up

T____________T

 

And to make matters worse, the work team broke my key WTF.  

I didn’t even know it was possible to break a key??????  

While we were away, I left the key with the guardhouse so the workers could pick it up and let themselves in to finish the work. When I came back I took the key from the guardhouse without realizing it was broken.  Then when I tried to fit in the door, I couldn’t and only realized it had broken off wtf.

The team had at some point broken the key so they just let themselves out using the backdoor.  And they left the backdoor unlocked and didn’t bother to inform security or management.   Can you imagine how angry I was? I nearly developed preeclampsia again wtf.  

I called Kaodim in a fury. To their credit, they were very sympathetic and professional. When they heard what had happened, they did an immediate investigation on what happened.

We found out that the contractor had actually subcontracted the work out to another team and didn’t inform us or manage that team very well. When that team couldn’t show up, he didn’t let us know either. So luckily Kaodim sorted out all this for me or else I might be hospitalized. Or jailed wtf.

The contractors on Kaodim’s platform are all independent vendors, and so I understand that they are not able to micromanage everything they do. But the good thing about hiring contractors via Kaodim is that they make it their responsibility to make sure that you are satisfied with the end result of your project.

It’s fairly common knowledge that carrying out construction and renovation can be risky with many problems – shoddy work, delays, suddenly higher costs than expected, etc so I was really glad to have Kaodim on my side lol. They basically went in and found out what was going on. They dealt with the contractor for me which was a lot of stress taken off me. As far as I know, Kaodim insisted Mr A to send over his people (to which he hired a second batch of worker to clean up the mess) to fix the issue, and they helped me follow up to make sure the job was done and to my satisfaction. I was also told that Kaodim addressed the issues that I’ve face with Mr A to make sure that this will not repeat again on other customers.

And now, everything is finally done! We found out that the leak actually came from a hairline crack in the water tank in the roof, and not from the aircon pipe as initially suspected. The contractor drained the tank, waterproofed it and it seems to have fixed the issue.

So the wall was repainted, and all the stains removed!

The original leaky wall was also fixed and looks pretty good. 🙂

Kaodim hounded them to fix the bad workmanship on my cabinets.  This photo was whatsapped to me by them as a progress report. 🙂

Cabinets sorted too.

Windows resealed and refinished.

Removed the paint splatters off my stairs and cleaned them up.

Taking photos hehehe.

These window sills were all fixed too and cracks in the wall patched over and smoothened.

There was a pretty bad crack here too which was also patched.

 

All in all, I’m glad we used Kaodim for this.  I was really not looking forward to the process of repairs cos I know I sure kena some shit wtf.  And true enough, the process was painful but I wouldn’t have gotten such a good price for it if not for Kaodim.  And I’m thankful they helped me sort out all the problems sure to crop up in any renovation or repair work.

If you’re looking for any service providers, get your free quote from Kaodim!

You may also download the Kaodim app on your phone (available in iOS and Google Play Store)

When you’ve booked a job, you can use my Promo Code: fourfeetnine.  Key it in to get RM20 off your first hired job on Kaodim. 🙂 Offer ends 31stDecember 2015.

This post was written in collaboration with Kaodim