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Annual door inspection work in Qld is a mafioso style racket, so I’m told you must not get the same folk who do the inspection and fault finding to thereafter be the same who quote the new apparently required works. ‘Don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut’.
We were told we needed 46 of 50 new doors. You can sniff a rat, I’m thinking, by the number of recommended doors to be replaced v the number they say they can just repair (we were sold 46 new and 0 repairables!).
On the works to be done, know your committee can’t break the full cost of this into smaller jobs and sell that to owners if it’s all really just one big work order. Your committee will likely then buy into the new door colour and furniture without reaslising they can’t just totally change the look and feel from what was there.
That would take it from maintenance related same/same to an improvement which is subject to different spending limts and if not like for like, [meaning it] needs owners AGM motion approval – otherwise the old fools rush to buy cheap junk that owners are thereafter stuck with – esp if a few would not be at this decision making committee meeting and 3 or 4 folk without any expertise will win the vote and the over-priced value destructive stuff goes in… which it can’t remain in when someone thereafter tells them they can’t and then you all pay for the rectification.
Finally when any new stuff does go in, ensure someone capable checks it. In our case at least one of the new beaut mismatched painted doors with silly handles and wrong locks was delivered and installed 20 mm too short so not to new spec and sure to be pinged when the same guys come back for next years inspection.
And to help avoid that ensure all owners are properly briefed on what they can and can’t do to keep the new doors up to spec – as in, put your own peep hole in and we need replace the whole door.
Final thought would be: it wouldn’t be hard and certainly neighborly if the committee gave owners the choice to stump up and pay the little extra to have the internal side colour painted to match their interior colour scheme if this has been changed during any reno work they make have done before their own painter packed and left at a time prior, rather than be forced have the same exterior colour forced upon them inside their home.
Our story is yet to run out but it’s been a horrible stressful affair for those of us trying to avoid the death by 1000 cuts here.