By

Craig Ennew

—

Four: Bungalows and Builders

This week: Craig and his wife contemplate a revised quote from prospective builders.

A second quote has come back from Builder Will.

The first one was steep but, to my relief, not too much of a shock. We have no plans to add to the original footprint of The Shack, after all. My wife agrees. ‘The figure shouldn’t be too horrendous,’ she says as I go to open the attachment in the email. ‘I mean, it’s just knocking a few walls down, basically…”

I hesitate. We want bi-fold doors, a new kitchen, an en-suite – the list goes on. Demolition is a minor detail. I decide the best policy is to keep my mouth shut.

folk take on a bizarrely cavalier attitude when it comes to shelling out for building work

So in comes the first quote. Because I’m a bloke, I always look at the price before anything else. So my eye moves straight to the headline figure. I nod sagely. We can handle this. We’re talking mere tens of thousands here. This constitutes a hefty chunk of our annual salaries, but folk take on a bizarrely cavalier attitude when it comes to shelling out for building work. Your average consumer will walk three hundred yards further down the road to Lidl when he hears that a multi-pack of Doritos is 10p cheaper there; but when it comes to building work, he will toss a fistful of blank cheques at anyone who can wield a mallet. My wife and I are no different to the rest of the punters. It’s all very do-able: we flog our place in Salisbury; we buy The Shack; we renovate; and we come out smiling, hopefully with a smaller mortgage and less property to manage. What could possibly go wrong?

But as we’re looking through that first quote, we start to remember the things we forgot to put on the list: the veranda running along the front, the under-floor-heating and the air source heat pump. As we revise our initial spec, my wife spies the opportunity to toss in a few upgrades: ‘We’re not having those ugly white UPVC windows,’ she says, ‘I want anthracite grey aluminium – tilt and open. It’s a coastal property thing, don’t you know? Oh- and no curtains.’

‘No curtains?’ I ask. Is she thinking of those electro-chromic affairs that turns black when you click your fingers? I saw one once in a toilet in Cologne and couldn’t pee for fear of it suddenly becoming transparent again. It turns out that her solution isn’t that much cheaper: electric shutters that hug the window frames on the outside of the building– like the ones they have in cool countries like Germany and The Netherlands. You know- the ones that sell for 500 smackers a pop. Then there’s the veranda. Wood? Wood’s sooo ugly. For us, frameless glass panels all the way, if you please – seamless and slick with slate steps leading down to the garden. ‘And the front door’, she adds, ‘We need to get one of those sturdy ones made with engineered wood – tall glass panels either side.’

I swallow. ‘So you’re clearly not a fan of the ones that merely open and close then?’ I suggest. I can see where she’s headed: the New England weather-board, seafront look. In a word: expensive.

I feel I have no option but to chuck my hat into the Arena of the Spendthrifts. Solar panels maybe? And a few gadgets? Zoned heating and lighting controlled by a fancy app. One of those Ring doorbells where you can screen cold-callers and any new neighbours you take agin. Maybe we also get one of those little whizzy things you stick on the roof to measure wind speed and air quality…

As the wish-list lengthens, Builder Will cheerfully adds to his jobs. Naively, I wonder if he intends to source any of the work out – if there are things he’d prefer to leave to specialist contractors. But no – Builder Will is more than happy to take on the whole kit and caboodle. Hell, he and his team’ll even knock up a few bacon sarnies every time we come to inspect progress. Hoorah for Will.

So the second quote arrives. Builder Will includes the first quote underneath, so that we can see it separately from the extras. I open the attachment. The horror reveal : the extras come in at more than the total of the original quote. Yes, Dear Reader: we have more than doubled the spend. This, I feel, is quite the achievement, even for us.

I find myself mentally stripping away the thing we can do without – those extravagant, luxury items. What were we thinking? What happened to our vision of simple coastal living?

I breathe out. The under-floor heating- that’ll have to go for a start. And the solar panels. The veranda is also up for the chop- we could just have a rope dangling from the doors. And I’m back to white UPVC windows which are two-thirds of the cost of their aluminium equivalents. In fact – do we actually need windows at all? Cavemen didn’t need windows. Windows are for losers.

Of course, I don’t say any of this to my wife. She’s too busy justifying keeping everything we’ve dreamed of to listen to her tightwad husband.

The other nagging worry I have is that we haven’t even met Builder Will. Neither of us has asked for references from satisfied customers or even looked up his credentials online. He could be anyone. We’re putting everything into this man’s hands. If he has hands. There’s more. Builder Will hasn’t been within five miles of The Shack so, 2D plans and a few pics from the estate agent’s particulars excepted, he has no real idea what he’s taking on. This is probably why, up till now, it’s been a case of ‘Yes, we can certainly factor that in’ for every one of our whimsical demands.

I picture the scenario where, after we’ve met and exchanged pleasantries, he takes a stroll around the interior and exterior of The Shack. The guy doesn’t suck in through his teeth even once. He brandishes his pen and embarks on a series of exuberant crossings-out of jobs on his list that no longer need to be done. ‘Well, my lovelies,’ he beams, ‘I must say that the job is far simpler than we envisaged. We’ve foreseen complications that are simply not there. As a result, I’m delighted to say that we can slash the quote and project time in half.’

Said no builder ever.

Reader, I will keep you posted.

©Craig Ennew 2024

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