We got back the best and finals from our two short list candidates and it was a bit disappointing. Ok, it was a lot disappointing. After reducing our “Phase 1” scope to just rough-ins and painted drywall, the costs actually went up from both parties. Ugh. One we had expected to stay about the same, while the other we thought might go down a bit. The jump in the budget did take the wind of our sails and we didn’t get a lot done this week.
Builder A came back with a few changed bullet points and the exact same price but now that we are pouring over the details, there were a few gaps that started to concern us. He articulated a few assumptions (we won’t have to do x or y and this does not include z). This is all well and fine, but our question then becomes, “and what if we do have to do all of those things?”. It is great that he is making it clear they are not in scope but other builders included them in their budgets. Their scope also did not mention the deck which is a big part of the reno. We followed up about the deck and to get details on the “what if’s” that he had indicated were out of scope. Turns out the deck hadn’t been included (it has been 6 weeks since we first did a walk through) and his estimates for that and the other items were in line with what other builders had told us. It also took away all his price advantage. He is cheaper because he left stuff out and is hoping for the best on a number of items that could swing the budget by as much as 10 or 15K.
Builder B went up by about $40,000 over all. I was able to find a big chunk of it (in fact it was his addition of specific costs for the deck that made me go back and review Builder A and made me notice that he had missed the deck) but he had changed the format of his spreadsheet so item numbers didn’t always line up. A few things went up by a bit, and others went down by a bit and some that had been broken out individually were now lumped in with big chunks under “labour”. I followed up and we got back a 3 page email with his rationale which all made sense even if i wasn’t thrilled about it.
Now that we can compare apples to apples the two candidates are within a few thousand dollars of each other. While both are still within our budget, it has reduced our contingency and finishing budget. Keep in mind we took out everything i can do (i don’t necessarily want to) and this includes things like flooring, cabinets, tiling, etc. That 40K jump basically means that i am going to have to do a heck of a lot of finishing work and we will keep our stove until the suite is rented. We can stretch our budget by looking at financing the cabinets through ikea or Home Depot (assuming they are willing) and most of the appliance places offer 12 or 24 month financing. This all helps us stretch the budget but we had hoped we had enough to justput everything into the financing for the basement. Oh well.
We are going to keep rolling and Sarah will be contacting references for Builder B this week. We both feel that Builder B might be a little more expensive but his estimate has a lot more detail and he has put more thought and attention into his proposal than Builder A. Sarah found some great resources from the Canadian Home Builders Association with questions to ask your contractors references. We are also going to follow up with the architect and we have the energy inspection lined up for Thursday. Once the energy audit is done i can start on the demolition so at least i will have an outlet for my nervous energy!
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