A few months ago, I paid $6k as my share to repair all the balconies in my building. Due to a deficiency in the construction, all the balconies are prone to water ingress, which could weaken them structurally.
They’ve been repairing the balconies in batches and I received notice late last week that this Monday is my turn. The whole thing is a pain in the ass. First, I had to remove everything that was on my balcony. I had two wooden chairs and a wooden table, plus two metal folding chairs out there. I had to bring them all in and lay them on the tarp I placed on my living room floor. The reason I used a tarp is because my balcony gets super dirty and basically is dirty year round. The amount of dirt that has accumulated on these chairs and the table is disgusting. You can put any kind of furniture out on my balcony and within a week, it’ll be coated in dirt. That’s a big reason why I never use my balcony and it’s essentially wasted space.
The work is scheduled from 7:30am-4:30pm, five days a week. They’ve also told us to close all our windows or sliding doors during that time. The reason for this is, apparently, they need to power wash the balconies and other construction/repair debris might fly through open windows and doors. This is ridiculous because my apartment becomes almost instantly filled with stale air if all my sliding doors are closed. I live in a modern building, so it’s designed that if all my windows are closed, there’s no leakage of air. Where the hell do they think I’m going to get fresh air from if all my windows are closed for eight plus hours? I’m going to leave my sliding doors open at least a crack because I’m gonna suffocate otherwise.
They’ve also asked us to take down anything off our walls because apparently the repair work involves doing things that causes massive vibrations and that might shake stuff off our walls? What the hell are they doing that might shake securely fastened items off our walls? How loud and disruptive is this gonna be?
Last but not least, they’ve also promised to put in wooden rods to prevent our sliding doors from opening anymore than four inches. So even when they’re gone for the day, I can’t get as much fresh as I’d like. Apparently, this is going to be done because other residents were putting their furniture back on the balconies before the new membrane had time to dry. That I can see happening because the majority of people are complete morons that can’t follow the simplest of directions. Unfortunately, these people have ruined it for people like me.
Anyways, they haven’t even told us how long this stupid repair job is gonna take. I can tell already this is gonna wake me up early and disrupt my entire work day with noise, vibrations, and crappy stale air. To think I had to pay thousands of dollars for this too. Super lame.