Well today we had a sort of emergency. My son lit my father's wood burner and when he went outside to get more wood noticed no smoke was coming out of the chimney. Then going up into the loft saw the smoke was coming out of the wall and the beams in the roof were black!!!!
After phoning a friend who lives reasonably close to us, he came round and emptied the fire and sprayed the beams with water and said we must not use the wood burner again until it has been looked at and that it looked like it had not be installed properly.
The wood burner was installed by a so called builder who used to be a hairdresser in the UK. He has befriended himself to us when we were in need of many things mending and had no money but a shed full a tools and toys that any man would be jealous of.
David, who used to live with us, who was supposed to be renovating our house, after spending all our money conning us out of everything then disappearing had left us with a 300 ft shed full of new tools machinery and toys like quad bikes. So there I was left with all these things that I had to sell 'or swap' just to pay bills or get work done! This is how I came to agree to swapping lots of items to this local 'builder' who suggested taking lots of things in return for work.
Anyway our so called 'builder' said he would swap lots of items in our shed for work we needed doing in the house. We agreed and he took many items worth a lot of money and told me to do a list of things that needed doing.
Well my list was never started he did a few little things like a couple of wood and mesh gates, making the garage doors run smoothly, mending a water pipe and making a cupboard. The last thing he did was install my father wood burner. My father had the wood burner for a good few months before he finally came to install it when the weather turned to -21 and my father was left with not heating and a hole to the sky. He finally came to fit it, his mood was bad, the atmosphere was terrible and my father and I were really embarrassed and felt bad that he had come over to us to do it. He kept swearing and telling us he had other things to do and that he didn't have time to be here.
Well we find out that he didn't install it properly and it could have caused a major fire in the roof which we probably wouldn't have known until too late and we would't have been insured because he isn't registered to install wood burners.
The funny thing is he came around a few months ago and said he would be doing no more work for me for nothing as he didn't get any help from us and he could't afford the time and effort for no money! I think he was forgetting the 100s of Euros worth of machinery furniture and tools he took form the shed for nothing.
Moral of this story is - It doesn't matter how desperate you are never agree to anything that means someone owes you something. If you do make sure you write it all down (something I didn't) and make them sign the list of items taken and the value. The the list of jobs to be done for the value and cross it off when done. This all sounds easy but when you have hit the bottom all rationality goes out the window and you just trust everyone who comes along smiles and promises things.
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