Category: Planning

The purpose of this meeting was to review some changes to our bid and discuss some ways we could potentially save some money. This was by far the most tension we felt going into the meeting, but to spare the details, it turned out better than expected. I’ll just note a few takeaways from the meeting.

Going in we thought we were going to need to discuss the issue over the first floor ceiling height. If you read my last post you know that we had wanted 9′ ceilings and were told the bid was for 8′ ceilings. Well, it turns out there was some miscommunication and the bid was for 9′ ceilings on the first floor all along. The second floor has 8′ ceilings, which we were aware of and are fine with. So the lesson to be learned here is to not overreact, but just ask for clarification especially if something doesn’t seem right.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this yet, but we have some unique features to the house, one of them being a gym in the basement. Well in order to have a gym you need to span some pretty long lengths without vertical support poles (that wouldn’t work so well while playing basketball). The initial plan and what was bid on was to use floor trusses to span the 33′ width of the basement. This was a good plan and there are some benefits to using floor trusses, however, the builder presented a new plan that would use floor joists on each side of the huge steel beam that runs the length of the foundation . Apparently this plan can save us a few thousand dollars (we’ll have the actual numbers in a few days). So this was good news and definitely something we’re interested in taking advantage of. On top of that, we are going to get numbers on a new roof structure that could save us several thousand dollars as well. The original drawings called for a modern style shed roof that would need to be custom engineered. We are going to see what a more traditional yet modern prairie style roof would cost in comparison.

The lesson to be learned here is to be patient with your builder and try not to get overly emotional as details unfold, especially when you’re dealing with money. Fortunately, it seems we are working with a builder who is willing to work with us and look at alternative ways of doing things to save us some money without sacrificing quality and performance.

I hope I can report good news in the coming weeks. We feel we are getting close to signing off on this build so stay tuned.

So we’re moving along in the process and have started seeing some real numbers in the past couple of weeks. At this point our plans (or what our builder calls drawings – future post on this) are pretty much done and have been sent out to the contractors to bids and the contractor has put those numbers together in a bid/proposal. For us, this is a spreadsheet that lays out each part of the build and all the inclusions and then options for upgrades or downgrades. There is no way around it, when money comes up tensions rise. This part has easily been the most tense and frustrating part of the entire process.

Because this is our first experience building a home, I can’t say whether this is going smoothly or whether the builder is doing a good job or not. What I can say is that there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of unknowns here. What we’d really like is transparency and I’m afraid we are  not going to get it. But maybe we will, maybe we just need to ask. Anyway, the numbers came back and they are quite a bit higher than what we hoped for. We are in the process of unpacking the details of these items and trying to find places where we can save. This has been a little difficult because there were some mix-ups in numbers and expectations in the initial bid so we are just disappointed when things don’t line up like they should.

For instance, there was a  line item for three additional paint colors and it had an up-charge for that. The builder said he thought that charge should have been included in the base price thus there would be no explicit up-charge. It was then our understanding then that if we decided not to go with the three additional colors we would be credited that cost. We decided not to go with the three color option, but then it was later determined the the three color option was not included in the base price thus we weren’t given the credit. Another big item hit home on the newest proposal. Throughout this process we had expressed interest in 9′ ceilings, but it was never explicitly written down. So when we asked it be detailed they said it included 8′ ceilings. So now, if we want 9′ it’s going to be an additional cost.  Some of these things are par for the course, especially for a custom build, but it’s a bit frustrating to have to come to terms with.

Nonetheless, we are kind of freaking out about the cost and are wondering what to do next? We have a meeting with the builder tonight and are trying to figure out how we should approach it? The last thing we want to do is get on the bad side of the builder. I think we could try negotiating with tact or ask for the pricing to be broken down so there is more transparency moving forward.

I will let you know how the meeting went.