When there is renovation work being done upstairs and you happen to be at home to “hear” all about it, it’s no surprise that your temper might be on a short fuse.
But when the renovation works literally caused the ceiling to collapse onto your kitchen table, then it’s all hell broke loose!
Renovation work went wrong
As reported to LianHe Wan Bao (联合晚报), 35-year-old Mr Wu who lives on the 8th floor of Block 751 on Yishun Street 72 noticed that some renovation works are going on upstairs at around 1pm, no thanks to the incessant noise.
At around 3 pm, however, he heard some rustling sound from the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable “thumps” of heavy objects falling.
When he walked into the kitchen, he was shocked.
“The chair and the floor are all covered in lime powder. The table even has bigger chunks of concrete.”
He looked up and realized that parts of the ceiling have fallen down.
As he went closer to check the damage, he flicked the bits of seemingly loose concrete.
To his surprise, a whole piece of concrete fell out, as a result, leaving behind a coin-sized hole in the ceiling, allowing him to peer directly to the floor upstairs.
Quickly, he reached out to the renovators upstairs and took them to his home to inspect the damage.
The workers told him that the foreman will deal with it.
However, when the foreman arrived, he informed Mr Wu that it wasn’t their fault the ceiling in Mr Wu’s kitchen collapsed as he said that he followed the regulations for reconstruction strictly.
He claimed that the concrete collapsed because the house is old, further stating that this kind of situation is “unavoidable”.
Naturally, the foreman’s response made Mr Wu very, very angry…
…and you wouldn’t like it when he’s THAT angry!
Sarcastically, he replied, “Oh, it’s not their fault… so my house’s ceiling just decided to open up a hole for no reason? We didn’t do anything to our house and the ceiling now has a gaping hole… this is just ridiculous!”
A repair and a thousand-dollar compensation
After some to-and-fro, the renovator finally agreed to repair the damage, but Mr Wu isn’t happy with just repairs.
Since he will have to stay at home to monitor the repair work, the other party should compensate him for losing out on his earnings as a ride-hailing driver as well.
Not to mention, Mr Wu also claimed that the incident caused some psychological trauma on the family.
“My mom didn’t dare to enter the kitchen for several days. Thankfully, we weren’t in the kitchen when the ceiling collapsed. If not, the situation would have been much more severe.”
An unprecedented situation
Despite the incident, Mr Wu said that he still hears renovation work being carried out upstairs, so he called the police.
However, the person in charge of the renovation work, 61-year-old Mr Bai, later clarified that that have already stopped any work. The noise Mr Wu heard likely came from the workers cleaning up the place.
“We’ll wait until professional engineers have completed their inspection of the building’s integrity before restarting our renovation work,” he said, adding that although the hole wasn’t directly caused by their work on the upper floor, they are still willing to repair the “hole” and pay S$1,000 in compensation to Mr Wu to settle the issue.
Mr Bai also explained that when the workers uncovered the floor tiles, they found a large number of broken concrete fragments there.
They had to remove the broken fragments first before paving a new floor because if not, the floor will be hollow.
Unfortunately, because of the age of the building, there is just too much broken concrete.
At one point, they exposed the steel bars while removing the broken concrete.
“That’s the point where we stopped our work, but that’s also the time when Mr Wu came upstairs to let us know that a part of his kitchen ceiling had collapsed.”
“Frankly speaking, in my 30 years working in this industry, this kind of situation is incredibly rare. I guess it’s down to bad luck. Hopefully, the compensation will be able to resolve the issue quickly,” he added.
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