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Determined Decorators
Choosing and purchasing a new home in China is the easy part. Once you take over the deed, you receive an empty, concrete shell, and must figure out the best way to make it into a comfortable dwelling. While “menu style” pre-furnished apartments are becoming more popular in the big cities, they are still few and far between, and in lesser developed urban centres like Chongqing, practically non-existent. So while we were very excited about our new pad, a 29th story apartment overlooking two rivers and the northern part of the city, we faced the daunting task of furbishing it from top to bottom.
Many people opt to buy all the material themselves, and have to negociate for everything a new houses requires: plumbing, water heaters, electrical wiring and outlets, natural gas, flooring, paint, plaster, tiles, doors, door knobs, light fixtures, light switches, and a myriad of other items such as furniture and appliances. While most of this work is done for you and new homes are usually ready to inhabit in western countries, people in China by necessity must become experts in home decorating.
There are home furbishing companies that do an appraisal, create a unique design, take care of the many details, buy the necessary material, and mobilize the manpower to make the house into a home. Some are reliable, reputable companies that care about doing a good job and satisfy their customers, but the majority are in it just to make a fast yuan. Especially in Chongqing where the decorating industry is very unregulated, it is easy to fall in with the wrong people who only care about maximizing their profits and squeezing the consumer as much as they are able.
The other option is to go for independent contractors who just come in, take orders, do the work, then go home when the project is done. It is much cheaper this way as you design the floor plan, buy all the material, and act as on-site foreman making sure they put the socket near the ground and not above the door. However, this is time intensive, and can be an exercise in frustration if things are not going according to plan.
The dilemma with “professional” furbishing companies is that their services may be little better than independent plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. In our case, we struck what we hoped would be a happy medium, hiring an established company, and trusting them to look after little things while we designed the layout and bought the expensive items.
Our misfortune was being assigned a crooked foreman who was always looking to cut corners and for ways to be lazy. I was away on work for most of the decorating period, but Jennifer was there day after day, staring over their shoulders, making sure they were using the material we had ordered, and that everything was being done to our specifications. She had negociated the overall deal and was darned determined to get our money’s worth. She can be one tough cookie, and will not be cheated by anyone, so as you can imagine, heated arguments, unleashing some of the most colourful Chongqing dialect I had ever heard, often broke out often about this, that, and the other. In Chinese, there is an expression that translates to “steal labour, reduce material”, and is endemic in the housing sector. The foreman was a perfect example of this, and we found out later that he had secretly replaced higher quality material we had bought with his own inferior products, taking home ours and resusing or reselling it.
Suffice it to say, we complained about him up and down to the company we hired, and they actually fired him near the end of the contract. That was all and well, but meant we had no recourse to recover our lost material (not to mention Jennifer’s frayed nerves), so the company ended up compensating us for some of the poor work that because of time constraints and wanting to move in sooner than later, we just said forget if for now.
All that being said, Jennifer had really done herself proud, learning the ins, outs, ups, and downs of home decoration, standing up to a bully of a work boss, demanding and receiving compensation for services not rendered, yet finally creating a very comfortable and attractive living space that receives many compliments from family and friends, and that we are very pleased with overall.
last modified Jun 28, 2004 at 20:12
Hi Jennifer,
My hat is off to you! Sounds like you were determined to get the best possible job done, under stressful circumstances. It was interesting to note that when you buy a house in China, you just get the shell of the structure, and as the owner, you finish it out.
I don't know if I told Kevin this, but I was the 3rd woman home builder licensed in Tarrant County, in Texas. Tarrant County encompasses several cities. I was licensed in 1977, and I built homes all over Tarrant County for about 15 years. I designed the homes I built, took my design to an architect, he drew the plans, schematics and elevations, then I served as General Contractor (which was what YOU did) and built the home. Like you, I had to contend with sub-contractors who wanted to do as little as possible for as much $$ as possible. I, too, had a learning curve, and my first house was my least profitable because of mistakes I made in dealing with sub-contractors. BUT, I'm a fast learner....and the rest of my houses were very profitable for me. I learned that you have to be there, checking everything they do, making sure they're following the plan, etc. During my 15 years of building homes, my most memorable occasion dealing with a sub was a brick contractor. I had drawn a specific design to be used on a blank wall, and he decided to do another design instead. When I showed up on the construction site and saw him bricking the wrong design, I asked him why he wasn't bricking the design I gave him. He said he though the one he was doing would be better. He PATTED ME ON MY HEAD and told me, "Don't you worry, little lady, I'm doing a good job for you." This guy was about 6 ft. 2 in. tall, and I'm 5 ft. 1 in. tall. I really lost my cool. There was a stack of brick beside me. I got up on that stack of brick, took that big old guy by the front of his shirt, drew him up into my face and told him that I was the builder, that I made all the decisions, and as long as he cashed a paycheck with MY name on it, he WOULD do as I said! He dismantled the design he was working on, re-did the work with the design I had given him, and I never had a bit of trouble with him again. He turned out to be the best bricker I ever had. He ended up being one of my most dependable subs, and he was with me for 12 of those 15 years of building. So, see.......sometimes we just have to let them know WHO'S THE BOSS!!! Right??? When you are a woman working in a predominantly man's field, we have to prove ourselves over and over again, until we establish our reputation for knowing what we're doing. I'm proud of you for being able to withstand the pressure of the situation, and creating the beautiful home that you and Kevin and Perin are enjoying. You're my kind of gal.......Bo
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