Builder Choice Made

A couple of days ago we awarded the contract for the major part of our build. As avid readers may know, we invited our three builders who quoted for the whole job to re-quote minus groundworks and roofing. We also asked them to deal only with the basic construction of the shell, and the modifications to the existing building. They did not include anything for fitting out the bathroom, electrics, plumbing, heating, skirtings, plastering - basically just block & stone, joists, steelwork and floors.

Two of the three came back with a new quote. One opted out (by default - we did not hear from him again). We added a new one into the mix, just to make it interesting.

So, we ended up with three new quotes to consider, and they were not vastly different from each other. We still felt they were on the expensive side. However, Jan re-visited the pages of the February Home Builder magazine (see the April 14th entry in the blog archive) and did the calculations a little more carefully. In particular she realised that the figures quoted in the magazine are without VAT. The upshot was that the quotes weren't that far from the mark.

Previously we had a conversation with some friends of ours, Sue & Martin. They have already been through this painful excercise and urged us to consider breaking the job down even further - buying the materials ourselves, employing the sub-contractors individually and micro-managing the whole thing. We considered this carefully but in the end decided that we had already divided the job up enough. Sue had said how she had found it very stressful - to the point of nearly making herself ill. We also need to consider the timeliness. Our son is moving up to senior school in September and at the moment he is sharing a room with his younger sibling. Also, my parents have a room full of our furniture in their house. We really need to get this thing moving and considered another trip round the quoting loop to be a step too far. In any case, if we run out of money, Jan will just have to go out and earn some ! Sorry Sue & Martin - your advice is very welcome, we just didn't follow it this time. We thoroughly enjoyed discussing it over dinner though !

So. The builder is chosen. He is able to start in September, which should fit in nicely with completion of the groundworks - assuming it starts early July as promised.