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.