This time, it's the nightmare that every new homeowner dreads, getting nearly irreversible results that was not what was promised. As I blogged in the previous entry, the brick feature wall was undergoing preparatory work. After 3 days of work, we are most displeased with the results when we inspected the progress today!
The photo above shows the partial completed brick wall. The textured paint has been sprayed on and is drying. Where the groove lines were exposed, the problem areas become evident. The groove lines are slanted (notice those in the lower row?).
The following photo shows the preparatory work being done on the wall. The brick lines were all manually drawn. Subsequently, the lines were masked by masking tape. After the application and drying of the textured paint, the masking tape will be peeled off, exposing the groove lines to complete the brick wall effect.
The issue is that the process was entirely manual and susceptible to human error. There's no way to ensure that the masking tape form perfect straight lines and this resulted in a lot slanted groove lines. We were always ready to accept a margin of error but the results were beyond our threshold of tolerance.
The bigger issue is that we are not getting what we are prepared to pay for. According to the supplier's catalog, the process involved the use of a "Template" to ensure standardized brick design (See above pic). So why was masking tape used in our case which resulted in poor outcomes of wasted time, material and effort, gaining dissatisfied customer, and tarnishing the brand name of a reputable Japanese company?
We are expecting the supplier to make good on what they have promised after a meeting with their sales representative today. As the brick wall starts drying, the paint becomes as hard as rock making a reverse process almost impossible. Our request to the supplier is to revert the wall to original condition by removing what has been done ASAP and then start over using a template and a more skilled applicator to finish the job. It's arduous and time consuming but it beats having to hack and re-plaster the entire wall before starting over, which will result in even more wasted time and effort. Then we may even have to remove and reinstall our timber skirting. (Nooooooooo....!)
It looks like this setback is going to delay us by weeks perhaps. =(
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