A pig wearing lipstick?

Redevelopment is unavoidable these days. But you always hope that whatever comes next will be better, nicer than what came before. There used to be an original bungalow around the block from us and once the owner died, their son tried to sell the home in a depressed market. But, after pressure from his siblings, he eventually did sell to a developer and we looked forward to see what would be erected on the property. That was two years ago. Yup. Two. Years. Ago.

The developer ever so slowly demolished the original house, dug a hole for the new foundation. Foundation in. New construction slowly coming along. A row of four townhouses. My neighbours had a better view of the progress and they were keeping us apprised of what was going on and what they saw was not pretty. Shoddy workmanship. Shortcuts taken. The progress was slow and that meant we all got to see the results of the work for long stretches of time.

The site was always littered with garbage. When there was a bin, it was always overflowing. It led to drive-by dumping, making the situation worse. Neighbours told them to clean up their act and were laughed at and told to "f" off. Even the safety was horrendous, with workers standing on planks strung across two ladders.

One of the things I noticed was that the stairs of the end unit were too narrow for the foundation footings on both sides as witnessed by this pic. This was reported to the City, who apparently did nothing. It's still like this today and they're not even trying to hide it!

More examples of lack of pride in workmanship. My neighbour and I saw this basement window left open and wondered if it had flooded and they were trying to air it out. Many original homes in the area had communal water wells in their back yards and other developments like this one had tried not to decommission the wells to disastrous results. The window wells are in good shape as you can see.

The comedy continued with shoddy workmanship in the garage, where one of the supports by the garage door openings was very crooked. The garage door installer didn't even attempt to install doors it was so bad. The workers tried to fix it with a sledgehammer, but it's still not good enough.

Even though they installed underground sprinklers, they managed to let the newly laid sod dry to a crisp. Real estate signs have been planted on the front lawns for so long now, they're falling over, or maybe being vandalized by residents who have lost their patience. Hard to say.

Anyway, these horrible excuses for homes will go on sale, marketed as luxury town homes at some point and I feel bad for whoever gets suckered into buying them, based on everything we've watched over these two years of construction. The market is saturated and sales are slow. The owners will not likely get what they want. Waiting to see what they list for.