Just another brick in the wall

Our building is currently in the midst of a major capital works program.  This work includes repainting the exterior, inspecting and repairing the facade and fixing water penetration leaks across the building. Our building is eight stories high. Access to its facade has involved the installation of a series of swing stages supported by temporary scaffolding rigs.

Regular readers will know that we have a rooftop apartment in the building. As a result, we've had rigging assembled, disassembled, relocated and re-assembled on our northern balcony and apartment roof continuously since March this year.  We've also enjoyed mind-numbing bouts of drilling and pounding.  At times this has made working from our home office a rather stressful affair.

In recent weeks the works have moved to the southeastern corner of the building.  We've been waiting for this work to start for some time as it also involves extensive facade repairs designed to finally fix a persistent water penetration problem we've been tackling in the apartment for almost three years. The leak has progressively damaged carpet and wardrobe fittings in our main bedroom.  It's become a regular event to pull back the carpet in our main bedroom and distribute towels to mop up the water that's slowly leaking in.

To date, the building has completed five separate projects designed to plug the leak.  Each has progressively reduced the flow of water into our apartment.  However, until now nothing has completely sealed the building.  Although, on a positive note, the water membranes surrounding the perimeter of the apartment has progressively replaced.  This should give us several decades of trouble-free living.

The latest attempt to finally plug the leak has been more comprehensive then we'd anticipated.  Builders and engineers have opened up several sections of our southern wall, repaired its cavity and rebuilt troublesome sections. Fingers crossed we'll finally see an end to our much-despited towel mopping entertainment.  We'll then be able to start making plans for some long-anticipated renovations.

UPDATE: 3 November 2018
I'm delighted to report that the recent works have left us high and dry for the first time in years. Despite a week of heavy and unrelenting rain in late-October not a drop of water made its way into the apartment. Hooray!