4J

As many others in my town I have decided to make some alterations to my house - taking advantage of the good economic times we live in (still making up my mind if this actually true). Anyway - a friendly warning to any people out there planning some alterations: take you budget for the project and multiply it by 3 - at least!

Various friends and family members had given me the same advice, but I thought to myself: "how can it be? Why would a budget be that far off?". So, I did the initial investigations, got the quotes and then added 10% on top of it to make room for the unexpected expenses. I had it all figured out.

The the building started...

Apart from taking exactly 4 times longer then planned, it also cost me 3 times more then planned. Why? Well, there were various factors, and I hope what I put down here may help some other poor fellow some day...

• First off all, I only succeeded the third time around in finding a good builder. The second one had to do the work over that the first bloke got wrong, but in the end person nr 2 made an even bigger mess. Then I got nr 3 - a really good builder with also a good heart! If I had him from day 1, the raw building costs alone would have been at least half the actual amount I paid.
• As time went by, raw materials got more expensive. I started my budget early 2004. I did not keep track of inflation and other factors. Items like sanitary wear doubled in price in only one year. Tiles were about 20% up, and labor for tile laying shot up by approx. 30%.
• My initial investigations only budgeted for new electrical work. By the time the electrician got in the roof, it turned out my house was an accident waiting to happen. Yes - I got in a second and a third opinion and their conclusions all were the same. Didn't see that one coming :) electrical work turned out about 500% more expensive that I originally planned.
• My biggest mistake was in the end with the pluming - I worked on completely wrong estimates and I should have gotten proper quotes early on. In the end, it worked out about 700% more expensive.

So, that was some of the fun I had. The other problem was of course that I did not stick to my initial plan. I ended up getting a oven and stove more then twice the original price I planned for - because I saw a better model the day I went to actually by the equipment.

Finally - a point I am still trying to figure out for myself - I can still not figure what's the use of inflation figures. Just about nothing I have bought this last year (including food, petrol and building materials) obeyed the inflation figures. I wonder how this work? Maybe I will figure it our one day...

Well - some hard lessons learned. I hope this can be a little reality check for some one out there.

Cheers