It doesn't work that way

Many moons ago I built someone a house. 

The soon to be homeowner was actually the general contractor and I was basically the job foreman/chief carpenter.

Part of my gig was to obtain the materials. I took the prints and headed off to a few suppliers I knew were pretty fair about things, including a pair of local building materiel places.

When the bids came in they had itemized lists and Joe Future Homeowner went through them and told me we were going to buy some stuff from one place, other things from another place and so on.

I told him it doesn't work that way and he was somewhat stunned. I explained to him that the bid was for the entire package, take it or leave it. He seemed mildly upset and of course wanted to go with the cheapest bid which was an outfit in Seattle.

This was on Kodiak Island and it would require shipping which actually was included in the bid. The difference between the Seattle outfit and the local outfit was well under $1000 and I had to convince him that buying locally was a better deal as everything from Seattle would show up in several flats and vans all at once.

The stuff would have to be organized and stored properly as things like sheetrock fare poorly exposed to wet weather and he'd have to find suitable storage for it as well as move it to the lot as needed.

On the other hand, the local supplier was willing to deliver everything as needed.

The cost of this would be a few thousand less than having to rent storage and move things around.

There were a number of "Can't we just...."and although I suppose we could have, it was still going to wind up costing more money by trying to cheap out.

I did sit down with him and run the numbers and much to his credit he actually decided that the cheapest way to build the house was to spend the extra money to purchase locally.

As things went, the job ran pretty smoothly and from time to time I would point out that because the local house delivered in a timely manner that the job ran fairly smoothly. His griping stopped immediately and he seemed pleased with the progress.

If I recall, I do believe the local house shorted us a couple small items and it only took a phone call to have them delivered at no extra cost. Had I had to call Seattle it would have taken weeks for the shortages to arrive and maybe even had additional charges.

As usual one has to look at the total coast of things, think and most of all not 'cheap out' on a project.










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY