DrRoy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I know this comes down to a personal decision, but I just do not know what the right answer is. We have been working through a plan to remodel our family room and adjacent laundry room for nearly a year. Fairly big deal - vault the ceiling, redo fireplace, rearrange walls a bit, plumbing, electrical. Getting design work done and finding a contractor has been unexpectedly slow. We finally picked a builder (had to put $1900 down and paid $1500 for design earlier) and had an estimate of $52K for the job. There were allowances for various elements. Then we get into details - pick exact finishes, flooring, cabinetry, etc. We decide that we really like certain custom cabinetry that will add $7K. An electrician comes through to get details. He sees that we need an upgrade to our main grounding per code.
The builder has to take all this and revise the estimate. We are expecting something close to $60K. It comes back at $80K. We are pretty stunned. Even areas that we did not make any changes to have gone up. I feel like the builder misled us with his "allowances". The issue is not if we can afford it, we can. The issue is if the project is just not worth the cost any more. We can make changes to reduce the cost, but then we are getting less, so the value issue does not really change. We have not figured out what we want to do. We can bite the bullet and get everything we want, pare back in various ways, or totally bail and forfeit the initial $. Any guidance for us?
The builder has to take all this and revise the estimate. We are expecting something close to $60K. It comes back at $80K. We are pretty stunned. Even areas that we did not make any changes to have gone up. I feel like the builder misled us with his "allowances". The issue is not if we can afford it, we can. The issue is if the project is just not worth the cost any more. We can make changes to reduce the cost, but then we are getting less, so the value issue does not really change. We have not figured out what we want to do. We can bite the bullet and get everything we want, pare back in various ways, or totally bail and forfeit the initial $. Any guidance for us?
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