Deja Vu

I spoke with a friend yesterday who is following this blog. He (you know who you are) has redeveloped many many properties including one that I bought with a friend about 20 years ago which he did up for us.

Interestingly he reminded me that some of the problems that I have already highlighted in this blog were exactly the same difficulties that he had all those years ago. It is also interesting because I have almost no recollection of what work was required for that project. In hindsight maybe I should have taken more notice, it might have come in handy now.

By coincidence, that house was remarkably similar to this project in other ways. They are both two up two down cottages with front doors leading directly onto the living room with single story kitchens. If I remember rightly the earlier cottage did not have a bathroom at all, just an outside toilet. We (or at least he) put a bathroom between the two bedrooms which worked very well. Something we are going to try and do with this house.

He thought that the budget for the redevelopment was tight. I was pleased to be able to tell him that verbal quotes given to me on the replacement doors and the re-wire were below the initial guess which I was quite pleased about. His view was that those were the two areas where he thought we over estimated and that most of the other items were too low!

I got the first quote for the plumbing work last night and that is substantially over the guess so he may have a point. I will publish a guess v quote reconciliation when the written estimates have arrived.

The whole point of publishing my figures in such a public way on a blog was so that I couldn’t subsequently change history by claiming that I thought the refurbishment was going to be more money in the first place and therefore claim that I was right all along! It is clear that delivering this project within budget will be difficult but I still think achievable. We are not going to use a main contractor and will be employing the appropriate trades as needed so that will give us the flexibility to spend our money wisely by picking the best prices.

Sara Beeny will be proud.