You may recall I’ve had the occasional gentle whinge about our character home’s decrepit tiles for some years now.
As the house heads for its centennial, the original external wall tiles have passed their use by date. We’re reliably informed that they were probably just unwanted ballast on some cargo ship, which must have seemed like a boon to the original builders. What a stroke of luck for them – but not for us. They’ve been gradually crumbling away over the intervening years, as you can see by the number of tiles held up by shoddy repair jobs, likely undertaken each time the house was sold to some fresh rube. Honestly, you can see they’ve used any sort of cheap materials they can lay their hands on, falling just short of band aids and chewing gum. How was it not picked up in our original builder’s report? Good question. I suspect tile cladding has never been particularly big in NZ.
Anyway, after nearly being taken out by a couple of tiles as they fell several metres to the ground, we finally figured it was up to us to do a definitive fix. We accepted it might cost a few thousand dollars but it seemed the right thing to do. At that point the property market was at its peak, and flicking it on might have seemed a simpler thing to do. But, it’s a lovely location, right on the edge of town, an easy walk into the CBD. Plus, I can see the suburb I eventually want to live in across the harbour, from my desk in our bedroom.
So, the years long process of finding a solution began. Little did we know it at the time, but the junior in the architectural firm assigned to our case, lovely though he was, did not include speed and efficiency amongst his attributes. Progress moved at a glacial pace.
It turns out, every option was eye wateringly expensive, but since the senior in the architectural firm used to walk past the house on his way to university each day, and pause to admire the tiles, it was decided we should replace like for like.
Move forward a few years, through Covid times, after two tilers and a couple of builders had thrown their hands up in disgust, we finally began the project this winter. The budget blowout by this stage was more than the classic doubling, due to our new tiler, Tim, discovering that the mortar around the brickwork on the first floor was also on its last legs. This was an easy fix, requiring the minimum of equipment and only several hundred hours of labour. There was also the minor inconvenience of the concrete laundry ceiling collapsing, but that’s only to expected when you convert an old coal cellar without thought of waterproofing.
The scaffolding went up before I went overseas ($1000 hirage per week), and the tiles arrived about a month ago, who’d have thought the activities of Houthi rebels near the Suez Canal would also contribute to our cost blowouts?
Anyway, the tiles are being placed at a great pace now. I took this photo this week.
Strangely enough, I’m now feeling more positive about the project than I have for years. OK, we’re going to spend a cool half mill with absolutely no demonstrable change in the house, but we’ve provided income for a (large) number of people over a lengthy period during a general downtime in the business, and we’ve done our bit to protect Wellington’s heritage, at least until the next big earthquake. And best of all, the end is in sight!