If you ever hire a skip...

If you ever hire a skip for like a big house clean-out or home remodeling, etc...just thought I would share something that I learned this week.

We had the back half of our roof re-roofed this week -- part of which entailed our paying for 'Scaffolding and Skip' to the tune of approx £500 (that's only for the Scaffolding & SKip, btw).  Right, so the work is going along & all -- the roofers are chucking the discarded roofing bits in the skip & so forth.

By Wednesday evening, I could see they were near to finishing when I'd got home from work.  This was a large skip & still had a lot of room for rubbish in it.  So I chucked a piece of an old countertop in it that was left in our house by the previous owner.  And I thought ok - well when I get home from work on Thursday, the roofers probably will be finished & if there's any room left in the skip then, maybe I'll put some more odds & ends of this & that in the skip.

When I get home from work Thursday, the skip was completely FULL!  But not of roofing rubble...it was full of things like someone's old fake Christmas tree, an old bathtub, old soccer balls & all sorts of other rubbish.  So apparently the neighbours from all around saw a skip with space in it & decided to avail themselves of the opportunity to have their stuff hauled away for free (at our expense).  No one asked us if this was ok & I'm talking like a majority of the contents of the skip here!

  OMG!  How cheeky is that?!  And of course, no one offered to put any £££ in toward this -- granted most of the £500 was for the Scaffolding hire, but still - it's the principle of the thing.

I spoke to a friend of mine at work who used to work for a roofing company -- just asking her how this & that ought to be when they are finished with the work, if I picked a good roofing company, etc.  I mentioned the skip thing & she says - 'Oh yes!  That will always happen if you have a skip set out for days!'

She explained if ever she hires a skip she arranges for it to be dropped off first thing in the morning & collected in the late afternoon -- gets her stuff into it asap & that's that.  Although she explained that one really should ask the neighbour first if they don't mind your chucking this & that in -- what happened to us happens more often than not -- that people don't ask & are totally cheeky about it.

I wasn't really prepared to sort through our junk & I don't think we'd have had much to add to it anyway (not that we could have either!), so I guess no real harm done in the end -- we had to pay for it either way.  Even so, with the principle of the thing, I was simply gobsmacked.

Oh dear, that was totally cheeky!  Now in my dark deep past I may have put the odd thing in a skip (dumpster back home!) but not a privately rented one--maybe one in the back of a supermarket or something (not that that's right  )

Oh yes I can relate! That's just how it goes. AND don't be surprised if you don't have that skip in front of your house for the next week or so. When we had our conservatory done the job took about two days but the skip stayed ten! I called the skip company and they told me they don't pick up until someone needs one! She said they don't have room to store them so they basically just shuffle them around when needed. Total hassle! Especially since we had on road parking.

Oh yeah. People are really cheeky about this. It's unreal.

This one was smack in the middle of our back garden -- among the scaffolding & the roofing materials...so there was no doubt whose skip it was!

Fortunately, it was gone when I got home today & so was the scaffolding -- so they are done, well mostly...

My new back porch still has a gutter full of roofing rubble, so the roofing company is going to get a very polite call on Monday letting them know they need to make sure all the gutters are clean if they want to collect their big cheque for the work.  But that is another matter...

But if it was in the back garden, how did your neighbours even know it was there?? We'll probably be hiring one at some point, but ours will be in a walled-in, gated yard, so I was assuming (hoping?) there wouldn't be any problems.

That's so rude & cheeky.  There was a house just down from ours that had a skip outside it for weeks (literally & it was in the middle of all the flooding so it filled with water & stunk very bad), but no one did any of that!  Maybe its just your neighborhood?   

That's awful!  Very rude!  And even worse considering they went through your back garden to get to it!  Grrrrr!

TBH, I wouldn't assume that, chary -- but you'll probably fare better being walled & gated.

We're an end terrace but our back garden is open (not walled or gated) & opens onto the parking lot of the law firm next door...plus there's a narrow passage between our house & the law firm -- and you can carry on from there to another housing estate to the rear of our group of houses.  And we live on a high street.  In other words, our back garden is not really a private affair & that's ok - we're generally fine with that as part of community life here.

I know our immediate neighbour is basically gutting his house -- he recently inherited from his aunt.  He's already filled up two skips of his own with junk out of his aunt's house & there's so much more in there.  He's been having contractors around doing work inside the house -- so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the source of a lot of the rubbish, but I don't know because I wasn't here to see who put what in!  He is normally a nice neighbour & it might have been his contractors who did it.

I don't really think it's just our neighbourhood, based upon my conversation with the lady at work who said this is just the way of things.

We'll probably be hiring one at some point, but ours will be in a walled-in, gated yard, so I was assuming (hoping?) there wouldn't be any problems.

I seriously doubt you'd have a problem in your neighbourhood! 
Thing you can't have these things too confined otherwise the truck that delivers and picks them up won't be able to get to it.
What happened to Carolyn is very very common. In fact I've never heard of a single case where it didn't happen!

That's the thing -- just wanting to impart a tidbit of info for anyone who might do this in the future.  I'm always caught blindsided by these things -- never knowing what to expect & all.  I've never been a homeowner before & of course most things in this country are still new to me!

But hey ho - you live & learn.

But hey ho - you live & learn.

yeah yeah...now go change your avatar!   

That's the thing -- just wanting to impart a tidbit of info for anyone who might do this in the future.  I'm always caught blindsided by these things -- never knowing what to expect & all.  I've never been a homeowner before & of course most things in this country are still new to me!

But hey ho - you live & learn.

"Expect the unexpected" and "you live & learn" are 2 phrases that should be mottos for all expats.     Ching your neighbor on the head if you find out it was him.   

yeah yeah...now go change your avatar!   

Going to put a paper bag over my head...

I'm so not surprised given what happens to our wheelie bin! People can be so rude sometimes...