Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Finished Product

Well it is finally finsihed ...well almost. Still a few finsihing touches but it is close. Delays in time between last entry and this one can be explained by the commitment to getting everything unpacked and sorted in the house. We totally underestimated what this would take but now 3 months after being in  we are just about there. And now for the finished product. and some reflections on the process
Overall we are delighted with our home. It is everything we envisaged and more. It functions in the was we had planned. The building process was remarkably good and we are very happy with the quality of the work. Brent and his team have done a fantastic job.

Some lessons learnt
 It has taken about two and a half years planning, estimating, getting ideas and quotes to plan and execute the plan. It was worth it. You cannot underestimtate the time it takes to do this but the benefits in terms of time frames for building, budget and the finished product are worth it.Something will always go wrong when you are building. We have been lucky that these have been kept to an absolute minimum. The important thing when things go wrong it is that it is recognised and fixed. For example for a range of reasons the first attempt at sanding the floors resulted in a pretty poor job. But this was recognised and arrangements made to redo the floors. Brent had also been in a position where he had to use a painter that he had not used previously. Darren the painter promised Brent the world but did not deliver. Again Brent dealt with this problem and thankfully Brendan and the boys came in and fixed up what was really a pretty terrible job.

Many thanks to Brent and all the team. We would highly recommend them. And a thank you to Zol and all the team from Cutting Edge Joinery who did the kitchen, pantry, bookshelves, wardrobe, linen and vanities. You have been amazing!

On quoting
You need quotes as you go to ensure you stick with the budget, value for money and for competitve reasons. It has amazed me the number of times I sought quotes which were often provided on the spot and yet there was no effort to find out our names or if names were sought there was no efffort to follow up to see if we were interested in accepting the quote. For example... carpets. We went to four places to get quotes, all provided quotes, all let us take samples, only two took our names despite us having their samples  but only one of the four  followed up about the quote and wanted to negotiate on price. One store who have us a quote which was 15% higher than the other would not enter into any negotiation about price at all. And guess who got the quote... the one carpet business  who took our names, followed us up once the quote was provided, ....offered a reduction in price. The others - all who advertise as the place(s) to buy carpet have no understanding about sales!!

Similarly with air conditioning. We attemtped to get 5 estimates. Four companies got back to us. One spent 15 minutes on the phone telling me the problems with the job, and offering not one solution. One demanded to meet us on the day we asked for the quote, offered a different solution to what we wanted, said they would get back to use the next day and that was the last we heard. The winning one Lakeside air was the only firm which provided the quote, followed up on the quote, kept in touch with us through out the build to ensure we were on track for their requirements and delivered.