Home maintenance never stops. Most people hire out contract work to get the job done. That isn't his style. There isn't much he won't tackle on his own, from plumbing to electrical, drywalling and finishing basement space for practical use, excavating and filling in with exterior cobble for garden hardscapes, building garden sheds and decks, designing and producing full stained glass windows, installing hardwood flooring, and ceramic and marble flooring as well. Ripping out existing countertops and replacing them with sturdier-constructed replacements.

And, as he is currently doing, repairing shoddy workmanship and installation of the windows of our house. Built only several decades earlier, current CMHC standards allow for inferior products to be installed in all new housing construction. If we're looking at tract housing, all home builders seem to search around for "efficiencies" to allow them maximum advantage in sales profit. Figuring, no doubt, that problems when they erupt, will occur long after the guarantees have lapsed.

The builders contract out services to various independent contractors, many of whom don't subscribe to the theory once taught to apprentices that a job well done is a satisfying one; there doesn't appear to be too much in the way of pride of workmanship, nor does it appear that those working on construction sites view what they do as professional work worthy of naming it as such.

Moreover, the factories that now produce ready-to-go elements that are installed in house construction themselves use inferior materials and designs because they're cheap and functional. So the window frames my husband is now repairing are constructed of finger-jointed pine, not solid pine. And those who installed them left space where there should be none, for water to enter and rot the inferior finger-jointed frames; the protective "ledge" above the windows that are meant to drain rain away from the windows cut too short, too shallow; inefficient.

Little wonder that most of our neighbours began replacing their house windows years ago and others are still continuing the process at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. The replacements are vinyl-covered window frames to ensure that constant maintenance, cleaning, inspection and painting every few years is a thing of the past, for them.

The builder of our home was one with an excellent reputation for producing good quality construction. Our previous home which we'd lived in for an equal number of years, was also built by him, and far superior in workmanship than those we'd owned and lived in previously. Yet oversight was obviously a low priority, enabling sub-par materials and workmanship to prevail.