How would you feel working hard for countless years so that you may spend millions on a beautiful home, to find it one day destroyed, because someone had simply gone to the wrong door? That’s precisely what happened last week to one unlucky lady in Nanjing.
Ms. Peng’s new apartment is in a high-rise residential over 40 floors in height, located off Suo Jie in Jianye District of Nanjing. Having spent a cool ¥7.5 million on it, Peng then ordered another half million in decoration, which was recently completed.
But her excitement over the new home lasted little more than a month. On 4 November, Peng received a call from their community management, saying that a decoration team had made a mistake and had removed part of their floor.
According to Ms. Peng’s husband, they didn’t care much at first, taking 2 days to go and check for themselves. When they arrived at the scene on 6 November, they found it was not such a trivial matter.
Ms. Peng’s husband said incredulously, “Just a part of the floor?! The entire thing, door frames and doors have been removed!”.
Furthermore, in addition to the kitchen and bathroom, other parts of the home have been almost returned to their raw state, namely a bare concrete shell. Some walls were also marked “拆” (“chai”; to be demolished).
Peng just looked at the scene of destruction and was almost ready to cry, reports The World Journal.
In the wake of the incident, the truth emerged. When an apartment building is completed, it takes quite some time for property owners to change the default entry code, which are all deliberately left the same for the convenience of decorators.
All too convenient, obviously. The decoration team foreman, surnamed Su, realised in retrospect the mistake he had made. Allegedly feeling dizzy, he one day mistakenly went to the 19th floor to continue decoration work, instead of the 39th floor.
At the apartment, the entry code supplied to Su was accepted and he went about his work, not finding anything strange at first. Only when he tore down one particular wall did he notice that a mark he had made last time was missing. “I thought, ‘What if I’ve come to the wrong door’”, he said.
Su said his regret at the incident meant he had not slept for several days. Now he just wants to deal with it, restore the apartment to its prior state and compensate Peng some of her losses.
