Thursday, April 07, 2005

I should change the name of this Blog
I should change it to Journal of a working mom who is trying to find a reputable contractor that doesn't charge $500 per square foot to do an addition.

After much rumination, discussion and guilt, I told the one contractor we had left that I didn't want to do the addition. So, we're starting over and we'll see where we end up. We're still persuing other contractors. But it may be postponed indefinitely.

Grrrrrrrrr....

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Mildly optimistic
So, my father and I went through the estimate together last night and were mighty dismayed by what we saw. He hiked up prices in places where the changes were miniscule at this point. For example, we added plumbing for a pot filler in the kitchen, and the pluming price bumped up 2k. A whole bunch of other stuff was $500 here, $80 there. So, basically it will probably end up costing the original bid, but it will be extremely stripped down. It's too bad. I really wanted to use this guy. But I'm really uncomfortable with his numbers at this point. He had it bid out to the penny for each component, and then he totally revised it.

So, I think we have to start over. We've found a couple of other people who are interested, and we'll go from there.

The Quest goes on. But now that we've made the decision, I'm feeling strangely relieved.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Still going through some contractor woes. We gave our contractor 30k worth of reductions and he came back with a price that was less than 15k lower than the original estimate. Some of that was due to a few things that were missed on the original, he raised the cabinet allowance, we added a window here, and brought gas there. He said he made a framing mistake, and that accounted for the other 10k of pricing change.

My father really thinks we can get somebody else before mid June. I'm sick of this and ready to sign. We've been through this over and over. We'll get a rough price, and then they up it 40% when you actually go to sign something. I don't see why anybody else would be any different. I think this guy is competent and ethical. It won't be perfect, but I just want the spaces to flow and to have lots of light. I really don't care about minute details.

I'm really discouraged at this point. I almost don't want to do it at all right now. Rich and I are taking turns being Bert and Ernie on this. I'm Ernie, care-free. Who cares if this is 50% more than we want to spend?? We'll end up with something beautiful!! It's our house and I want to live there forever! And Rich is Bert and he says: "Eric won't get to go to college if we do this."

Then we switch. Today I'm Bert "My dad doesn't feel good about the revised bid. I don't want to do this." Then Rich says: "We'll have budget crap no matter who we go with. As long as your Dad still thinks the contractor can get this thing built with an acceptable level of quality (i.e. no leaks, relatively plumb walls and level floors, etc) I think we're ok."

We keep going back and forth. My dad is going to talk to his fancy contractor that used to do this kind of stuff, but now only does million dollar projects. We're going to try to get one more bid. I just don't want to jerk this guy around any more than we already have.