And Now, The Good News!

Mad Marinos, the Psychotic Builder, has been shown the door, paid off, given his cards, had his chips, taken the long walk, and banished from our existence! Older readers may recall the anguish and misery this man has put us through over the last two or three years*.

It is now over a year since the building of the penthouse suite was 'finished' and under the terms of the contract we have been witholding 2% of the contracted price pending satisfaction on our part that everything is ship shape. Needless to say, it hasn't been and we've had to have all sorts of extra work done by other contractors as a result. So we've deducted those costs from the amount witheld. Marinos, however, had been expecting payment of the full amount.

As it happened, Looneytunes isn't actually in the country at the moment (he's in Bahrain) and so the matter was delegated to his son Dinos who has been 'running' the 'business' pro tem.  Any road up, we had the meeting yesterday with the architect and Dinos during which the final reckoning was made. Dinos was not happy when informed he'd only be getting less than a third of what he'd hoped for but, fortunately, although he is generally a bit useless**, surly and ill-mannered, Dinos is not a nutter so we had no screaming abdabs from him. However, he felt he had to phone his Dad to get his agreement and consequently the architect had to deal with the hysterical loony remotely. Lots of back and forth ensued, but eventually after El Presidente had made it clear that this was it - "Accept this settlement or forget it!" - and that no further negotiations would be entered into, Dinos relented, took the money, gave us a receipt and skedaddled. Somewhat optimistically, Dinos said to the architect as he left that he hoped he could work with him again.

El Presidente performed magnificently during the exchanges, which were in Greek, although I could get the gist of it. Not only did she stand up to Dinos but she also prompted the architect, who is a bit soft, to show a bit of backbone and not drift into compromise. Meanwhile, Uncle Hambis acted as observer and peaceful presence - he has known Marinos and Dinos for years and now accepts that Marinos is a 'difficult character' and no doubt regrets having recommended him to us. Now that Dinos has a few hundred from us, perhaps he'll pay Hambis the two months' rent his Dad owes him!
[*See post 30 April 2010 **See post 22 May 2010]