Building Fail?

For all of the really great pictures there were from our apartment, there are easily an equal number of pictures showcasing everything they did wrong when they built this place.  Most of the crappy construction is a result of an incredibly hasty building schedule and a large force of unskilled labor.  I think these buildings could have been much better constructed if it weren't for the major time crunch.  But when you make a deadline, I guess you do whatever it takes to get it completed on time.


So first up is an awesome door caulking/sealing job:

And if it weren't for all the ants, we wouldn't need to put poison all over the house like this.

 Turns out that cleaning up after finishing the building wasn't a priority for them either.  This is some of the stuff we pulled down from the ceiling accesses as we were doing some cleanup/maintenance/nosing around.

Cleaning writing off the glass wasn't a big deal for them either.

Painting well apparently falls into the realm of skilled labor here, because they decided our tiles needed some paint too.

Caulking peeling around the tub.

Grouting wasn't a major skill set for them either as seen below.

And of course, when they broke some tiles, instead of replacing them with new tiles, they just added more grout!

Measuring, which you would think is necessary for building, apparently was more necessary than they thought.  The cover for the toilet flushes don't line up with the hole in the counter top that was cut for it.

Again, the grouting issues propagated in the shower.  Our shower floor and walls look like junk.  There's grout all over the tiles where they let it dry completely.

And finally, they plastered over all of the ceiling accesses so when they get used, the edges get really beat up and start to crack.  Since we've had to get into some of them several times, they're starting to look pretty bad.

Despite all of of the poor construction, this wasn't the worst of it.  A few weeks after moving in we found mold in the bedroom.  Maybe next time we'll talk about the disaster it was cleaning that up!


On a side note, Steve finally got his Iqama (residence permit).  It only took six weeks when they said it would take two.  Now we're in the process of applying for Exit/Reentry visas so we can leave and reenter the country to travel!