We received three unexpected surprises yesterday. We received a call from the third contractor lowering his bid, sort of, and the bid from the second contractor. We also received a call from the first contractor that we had cancelled saying there was a mistake in the address and please come to their office and see that they in fact do have a company.
The lowering of the bid can be seen in two ways. At first you think you are getting a good deal because they lowered the bid by about $5,000 but the second part is that you are needing to buy a number of the supplies for the job. We already needed to purchase the new bathtub (which Dad got from one of his sub's), sinks for the bathroom, faucets for the bath sinks, bathtub, shower, and kitchen. In order to get the lower cost, we have to now buy the tile for the floor. It is about 400 square feet and depending on what you pick out, it could cost you about the same as the money that was deducted. The quandary is that this company just seems to be giving us so much extra in work. We really feel they will give us a really nice finished product. The price tag right now though is around $42,000 (with us buying tile and the rest). Should we? We will still be here for at least another 5 years.
The third contractor's bid is out of the park! He was so high it was ridiculous. He had priced the projects as two separate bids and only took 5% off if we did them both together. Together it would run about $60,000. I don't think so....
The first contractor called us because they had received my email canceling them. I had told them in the email that we never found their office based on the address written on their contract. It was a store with mail boxes. Of course we were told this was a mistake. The story was that they had moved to a new office and had used this business as their address and mail facility until they got settled. They still continued to use the facility for their mail but failed to change their address on their business cards. We never received a business card! This was an address they wrote on a contract.
They always seemed to keep their address secret. Dad did get their address and we do have a meeting this Monday to see their office and meet the owner. We still are unsure about them. They were the lowest. They are also not doing all that the third contractor is doing. The third one has a different idea and layout for the kitchen than the first. The third one will be saying us some money on appliances in that we are not getting rid of our double oven but just moving it to a different location. The first design was getting rid of it and the range and having us buy a regular range. We did not want that after looking at them.
This whole process has felt like one of the TV shows we have watched where the owner received three different remodeling ideas and then they choose. Only we don't have the boards they provide with the ideas and all the fabric, etc. It is drawn out or talk about so you have to use your imagination to see it.
I will be glad when this process is over.
Oh, I almost forgot. We do have another person in this mix. He is an owner of a remodeling store that will be giving us a bid on the bathroom only. I am not sure about this one at all. This was a guy that came out and disagreed with me about putting in a pocket door because it would so hard to fix if it broke. He told me he was going to have to have confidence that everything would be OK and it would not happen. Gives you a lot of confidence to hire this guy, huh!
No comments:
Post a Comment