Props to my fellow renovators who have been kind enough to post about their torment. It's nice to know that there are more people out there who are pursuing the same end goal as us ie: to live in a nice environment as soon as possible. There are many renovators blogging but the two I'm most keen to follow are from an editor called James Oliver Cury at epicurious.com (pic above) who's been doing his kitchen since February. He doesn’t blog enough in my opinion, weeks go by without an update on his renovation angst but when he does it makes it all worthwhile. Besides, spending so long on one room is making our entire house mission seem less irritating.
The other blog I found via the Livingetc forums and I love it because the writer has lots in common with me except that after nearly two years of working in phases, her house is actually finished, whereas mine is still sitting empty: Worst House in London. The beauty of the WHIL blog is that you can go back in time to read the story as it unfolds, and echoes of our own time dragging problems are there in black and white (it took them three long months to even have the documents ready for tender, for example). The depressing part is that as I write this, my renovation is in real time and there is STILL NO BUILDER APPOINTED. It's the first week of June fer petesakes!
I've sent two emails to the architect gently enquiring as to when the next quote is due in as I swear it was meant to be here last week. No update yet.
Hubby says I can't call him hubby in this blog any more because it makes him sound old, fuddy and quaint (and he's only two out of these three things…) so we'll call him Rob.
Rob is keen to get our builder friend to quote but as this may take another three weeks I'm beginning to wobble. Each month is literally costing us thousands as we're A. Paying two mortgages and B. Not getting any income from renting out our flat.
The builder that's meant to have a quote for us this week is supposed to supply an accurate figure based on what exactly needs doing, as opposed to the last quote which was plucking a random number out of the air (I mean how can they charge £8,000 to move a boiler?!), but Rob says it's likely this quote will be huge too because their hourly rate "may be higher".
What I want to know is how come we didn't just give the sum to the relevant builders and say "This is how much we've got. This is what needs doing. Will you do the work for this amount?" It seems to me that getting quotes in on the off chance the sum is smaller than our budget is a false economy, because the four months we've just wasted has already cost several thousand pounds.
1 comment:
Hi Kaybar
I know exactly how you are feeling - it's a horrible stage, and the one where our feelings about the whole thing were the lowest. We seemed to be spending thousands of pounds on fees every few weeks with very little to show for it. I had the same thought processes about stating what we had to spend and abandoning the whole pretence that we were going to achieve any cost savings. It cost us a lot just to get the architect to run the tender competition and in the end half the builders either didn't bother to submit a bid despite weeks of chasing or didn't adhere to the documents properly so weren't comparable. It's a very frustrating process but take heart, you will get there in the end.
Best wishes ( and fingers crossed!)
Georgie
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