There's been a delay and I want more money. That goes without saying.

Yesterday, I asked my husband what I should be talking about in my next post. His answer was "delays, delays and more delays". To that I added "money, money and more money". 

Let's start with the "delays" part, and the observation that people in the construction world have their OWN sense of time whom nobody else clearly can relate to. A couple of examples to illustrate: 

- getting a quote: "I will have a quote ready for you in a week from now". OK, that sounds reasonable. Except that one week in construction language kind of means more 3 weeks. The only way to get a quote back faster is to ride everyone's ass to death to call/email/call again/email more until the quote finally shows up. In other words, make yourself look like a total pain in the ass because you are asking for something they promised you'd get in a week time.
 - getting drawings back from the various consultants (engineers, draftsmen...). Again, what you are up against here is the quasi-impossibility to get a hold of these guys on their phone, the fact that they almost NEVER return your calls, and the fact that for them too 1 day really means two weeks. How about if you'd call your doctor's office and 1- they would not pick the phone -2 they would not call you back -3 they would show up 2 days late for the appointment??? That would be totally unacceptable... Well, apparently in the construction world, you can do whatever the hell you want and it is just acceptable to all. This is an industry that has extremely low politeness standards it turns out. One way to reverse this tendency: the old  "the-squeaky-wheel gets-the-oil" tactic. Keep on calling, keep on bugging and eventually, you'll get the attention you need. But frankly, it is quite exhausting and frustrating.

Let's continue with the second part of this post: the money issues. Building a house has mostly consisted so far in keeping the budget in line with what we can afford. The problem is, when you are building a house, people seem to think that you have suddenly turned into Bill Gates (the richest person on earth) and that you can afford pretty much everything (but of course). 

It is not like we have a skimpy budget and are asking everyone around us to take a huge loss and give us what we want at the price we can pay. We have a decent budget that should allow us to get most of what we want PROVIDED the suppliers don't try to stick it to us, screw us over , take advantage of us every chance they get. Last one to have tried this on us is the window supplier. His first quote was decent and in line with our budget. Next thing you know... as we are about to order and are kind of pressed by time, he sends us a new quote with a 10% increase (seriously, WTF is that all about?) that apparently took place in September and a 5k increase on top of the initial quote. That's because he forgot to price some windows in his first quote, he said. Ok, two things:

-firstly, why the fuck didn't you tell us about the 10% increase before it actually took place??? Maybe we would have placed the order before. But maybe, you are not a very honest person and thought "hum, now I have these guys wrapped around my finger, how about I fuck them over by adding a 10% increase (that came out of nowhere) that they will have to suck up". Now that's unimpressive and totally slimy.

-secondly, how did you miss windows in your pricing??? Windows and doors are listed in their very own section called Window and Door schedule and missing items in there is like missing several ingredients in a recipe. It is not that difficult to just follow the list and get the price right... unless you are omitting these items on purpose to produce an initial quote lower than your competitors'. Once you have been retained by the client because your quote is so much lower than the others, you pull your trick out of your hat and produce a higher quote based on the fact that " boooo, very sorry but I forgot to price a few windows so it is going to cost you another 5k". How graceful...Frankly I am impressed... NOT! *_*


So now what? Obviously I don't want to justsuckitup and pay this dishonest price so I have to make more phone calls and try to get pricing from other suppliers, crossing my fingers that they will be somewhat honest. But again, they might also get back to me in three weeks (well, 2 days in construction language) and that's going to cause more delays on the job site... That's just terrific!