Fair tradesman

Ole Thorstensen has been a carpenter for 25 years. A master craftsman, in fact. He is busy working on a minor job — ‘replacing a few windows, putting down decking and doing a number of other odds and ends’ — when he gets invited to bid for a loft conversion in a 19th-century apartment block in Oslo.

‘The Petersens have mentioned their desire for quality while avoiding unforeseen expense.’ No shit. The conversion will include a bedroom, bathroom and an office mezzanine and has all to be insulated, plumbed, wired, plastered, painted, floored and fitted out with furniture before a staircase can connect it to the floor below.

This is 1,000,000 kroner project (about £120,000) — ‘600-700 man hours needed in carpentry alone’ — and the job will represent approximately half of Thorstensen’s annual income. ‘If I get the bid wrong it is my wages that disappear.’

He only actually gets the job — the contracts signed and so forth — on page 88.