caymaniac:
Hey HH,
What news is there about the condos, Max e-mailed me a couple months ago and said the back ones were finished. You always seem to be in the know so I thought I'd ask you, we accrued again.
As of last month (October), *no* buildings were completely finished.
At best, 5 units in Building 1 (room 611-616) are at 90% completion. There was unfinished interior wood surfaces and the new furniture (reportedy "at the dock" for 2+ weeks) had not yet been picked up during our stay, let alone placed in the units.
The closed "6th room" in Bldg 1 is room 616, and reportedly, not only does it have no flooring, but it has 300+ bats living in the master bedroom's cathedral ceiling that need to be removed. Ralph (a good man) was supposed to get to that this month, after he built some bat-houses for his soon-to-be-displaced tenants. In any event, bat guano cleanup is known to not an insignificant health hazard for the people asked to clean it up, and given how the cathedrals extend back over the 3rd floor's bathrooms, I don't know how easy/hard it will be to clean up there...assuming that they'll actually try.
Going through a rennovated unit, room by room:
First, the master bedroom looks nice. However, any homeowner who's done any sweat equity will quickly realize that it mostly was just lighter paint colors on the walls and ceiling, and replacing the dark bamboo bedframe & furniture with white furniture that gave it a much lighter and open appearance. Add some new electrical fixtures and textiles and that's 99% of what they did in this room. Considering that the furniture dates from 1989 (literally!) you can't honestly say that it wasn't long overdue for replacement...and I understand that its now in a different part of the hotel! I could do what they did in this room for easily less than $500 in materials and 4 man-days (I'm a slow painter).
In the bathroom, they did extensive work, but (a) it really, really needed it, (b) some of their choices created unnecessary extra work for them, and (c) they made some dumb design mistakes.
Overall, most of what they did was good enough work. For example, they replaced the tubs with a shower base...fine so far. Commercial off-the-shelf shower bases are sold in three standard different configurations, based on their drain locations: left, right and centered. The left and right drains are designed to **perfectly match** the drain locations of standard tubs, so you don't have to touch your drain plumbing: one slilled worker can drop in and plumb a base in a single afternoon. Naturally, this means that Divi instead chose to buy center-drain bases, so they were forced to re-plumb all the drains in all the units.
Similarly, the rennovation deleted the outer bathroom door and the louvered window locatd above the shower. Remember how you would try to close up the bathroom when the wind was up to prevent the shower curtain from blowing out and getting the slippery-when-wet floor soaked? By continuing to use a $20 shower curtain instead of a $150 shower door, this problem has been made worse, because instead of three sets of louvers to block the wind (2 doors+window), there's only one (1 door),
plus the overlap of the shower curtain into the shower base is now only 2", whereas with a tub, its a good 8", so it takes less wind to cause it to billow out.
TIP: throw a towel over the *upwind* side of the bathroom door to block off the wind tunnel...the wind will hold it in place.
Moving on, in the outer area, the kitchen looks OK, but I hope you're not short like my petite wife, for you'll otherwise be unable to make the long reach to the cabinet that contains the drinking glasses - its blocked by the new peninsula. Similarly, the 'bar stools' are too tall, so there's insufficient legroom clearance for adults to actually sit at said peninsula. Finally, look underneath the stools and you'll see the sidewall of this peninsula extension was cheaply "finished" by painting it with a flat white paint. As any parent already knows, a flat white paint surfaces at shoe/foot level attracts discoloring foot/shoe marks faster than free beer is known to attract Divemasters.
Along the exterior, the new wall/window system was built mostly out of pressure treated wood which they've not put any finish on. Since it looks to me to be the now-banned-in-the-USA Arsenic-based pressure treated wood, I'd make sure to wash my hands after touching any windowsill before eating anything. And its also my understanding that these new walls were not built to the current Cayman "Hurricane Proof" building codes either (Max has effectively acknowledged as much and promised a fix to that 2 months ago). Perhaps the Government will grow a spine and do something, since November (right now) is when their hotel inspection comes due for 2006. Finally, Divi don't appear to have any way to wash the windows' exteriors, so they already have a nice "salty haze" buidling up on them. Plus the screening system is a fragile klunge - - while we were there, we had an overnight thunderstorm come up and its winds (far from hurricane force) literally blew one set of screens *completely off* of Unit 612, as well as damaged the frames in the screens in the unit we were staying in.
As such, my overall assessment of the job that they did in Bldg 1 is:
"a quick, cheap job whose objective was to just make it look good".
Moving on to Building 2 (rooms 621-626) in a word, its status is "gutted".
The bathrooms have most of their new rock installed, all the new shower bases installed and plumbed, so they're mostly awaiting installation of new wall tile, toilet, sink/cabinet and electrical fixtures. From where its currently at, a good contractor could finish it by himself in ~3 days, which means that Divi's unskilled work crew will need a month.
The master bedrooms are construction site trash heaps, but once emptied, I could do all that they apparently did in less than 2 days by myself...call that a Divi Man-Week.
The outer areas have their kitchen areas mostly ready for cabinet installation, but they shouldn't do that until they close in the exteriors, and they've not started the construction of the walls for the new windows...this will easily take them at least a month at the rate they move. While we were present, Max measured Bldg 1's (reportedly non-code) new walls, and I got the distinct impression that they're now trying to figure out how Barry White and Harold Foots built them last spring, since there apparently aren't any Engineering Blueprints. I don't even want to guess how long this will take them, but my overall assessment of Bldg 2 is that they will not be finished by their January deadline unless they bring back Barry White to GC the project and to pay for a good crew of professional trades.
-hh
PS: as of when we left, the dive dock still didn't have its left (east) wing built, nor any hint of an equipment shed built. From what I understand, the last time anything significant was done here was when they did some quick decking back in July...reportedly, just prior to an inspection from Divi Corporate.
