› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › CP and the Strata Committee › Replacing kitchen after essential building maintenance – should strata help pay? › Current Page
groundfloor – thanks for the clarification, it’s just that your wording had me a little confused.
There’s no doubt that the Owners Corporation (O/C) is responsible for making-good all damage that it causes (even necessarily) to its property in the process of repairing and/or maintaining that property.
Unfortunately, custom and practice doesn’t automatically extend that responsibility to private property, so in some Schemes (not ours) the O/C will go to literal extremes by dismantling part of a wall to access something like a common service, patch the wall, and then only paint the patched area.
Frankly, in your situation it depends on your O/C’s approach, but as it has to involve private property in order to access its property, it would be prudent in my opinion for it to dismantle your kitchen only to the extent necessary for it to then repair/maintain its property, and to then re-assemble it.
However, if that’s impractical from any perspective (incl. $) or unacceptable to you, behaving reasonably, then you would be within your rights to request some monetary recompense – perhaps equivalent to say 90% of whatever the contractor has quoted to dismantle and rebuild your kitchen.
I’m only suggesting 90% as you’re the Chair of the E/C and are possibly expected (and even inclined) to be overly reasonable; that’s up to you of course!