This past weekend my family held an event at our house to celebrate our backroom being done-ish. Yes, the addition I’ve written about for three years is come to a close-ish. I ended up doing a presentation to share part of the journey, and it was amazing how helpful it was being able to share it in that way. You’d think as a therapist I wouldn’t be surprised talking about something would be helpful, but… I was. The following is part of what I shared because it leads to an important realization I had that I’ll share at the end. For this lesson I’ll be focusing on the money side because as someone who’s really cheap, this was probably the most stressful part about the build. The constant screw ups and mishaps was one thing, but the explosion of costs was the worst. What’s an explosion of costs? Let’s look at that. Fun fact, based on the total renovation of our house in 2015, construction costs have at least doubled in 10 years, but that’s not the explosion to which I’m referring; that’s just the starting point.
Our first official worker told us they would dig out and backfill for $8000. Compared to me renting machines this was a great price. After just the dig out, however, we received a bill for $9500. I’m not great at math, but $9500 is more than $8k, and that’s just for the dig out part. When I asked the worker about it, he said it would only be another one to two thousand for the backfill. I told him based on the dig out I was guessing it would be three to four thousand, but he reaffirmed it would be only one to two thousand. After the backfill I had an envelope in the mailbox. In it was a bill for… $3500. That’s what I guess it’d be… but then I noticed there was another paper behind that one. Curious… it was another bill for $3500. That’s not good. And then I found a third bill for $1500, so he was kind of right. It was one to two thousand dollars more if you ignored the other $7000. When I asked him how this bill was $8500 and not one to two thousand like he said, he told me to just pay him $1500. What? He was just making up numbers. I paid $3500 because I didn’t want to be a jerk, but this experience didn’t make any sense.
The concrete people were a different problem. They made the foundation walls two feet too high. I was now left having to figure out how to fix that problem, which I knew would be thousands of dollars. The question that hung over my head was how many thousands of dollars – not a great day. It was definitely a pretty terrible start, but it would get better, right? I’m not sure if that statement makes me want to laugh or cry.
The framers were very different. They cost me zero dollars and had zero mistakes… because they did zero work. They never showed. We waited a month and a half and by late November we had our first snowfall. We were supposed to cut half the roof off, so that seemed like a bad idea. We decided to delay the project and get new workers for a fresh start. In March 2023 framing of the back room started with a new framer. The good news was that over the winter the wood prices dropped $11k because the COVID inflation was settling down on the wood prices. That was great because it helped offset the new framers who told me the full build would be $18k but after they started they told me they made a mistake and the bill would be $36k – that was another bad day.
Another bad day was when someone tried to install a $4500 window, but the pulley system he was using broke and caused the window to smash on the ground. He basically said sorry and walked away leaving me to clean it up and buy a new window. That was definitely a bad day.
The HVAC for this back room was also a gong show. Our architect (the worst possible architect we could’ve hired), unbeknownst to us, originally set us up with an HVAC system that was over $50k – that was stupidly unnecessary. Because our inspector told us we had to stick to the blueprints or pay to have them adjusted, we had to pay someone $1000 to change it. That was unfortunate, but we were then able to put in a heat pump system that was a fraction of the original system’s cost. We were told we needed two heads, but if we paid another $2000 we could have a third head put into the upstairs and that would qualify us for the government $6500 rebate. That sounded great. When the guy came to set us up for the rebate, however, he yelled at me for having the system already installed, but then five minutes later changed his mind and said we needed to put the siding up on the outside of the house before he would do the initial test. He told me I could have the month to do it. It was February, so not ideal. Nothing like doing siding in the coldest month of the year, but it turned out I didn’t have to… because two days later I received an email saying the government canceled the rebate program. That email meant I lost out on $6500 on top of the extra two I paid for the third head. That was a very email day. What’s funny is a year later the government brought the program back, but we didn’t qualify anymore. We managed to be in the one year window of not receiving it – awesome.
If you’re thinking those couple things cost us a lot of unnecessary money, you’d be right, but that’s not it. An improperly installed skylight led to a slow leak that was discovered after there was a mold garden growing in our ceiling. That meant redoing a ceiling for about $10k with me doing most of the work. That wasn’t the only thing our roofer screwed us on. We had to redo our flat roof section because he used the wrong material and it was improperly installed. It was less than two years old and it had to be ripped up and redone in order to stop the leaking. The best part was that section of the roof was $12k and the new material that is the right one was only about $5500. There’s more wasted money. Throw in another $1000 to tear up the original material and fix the downspout set up in order to be safer in the future and we had another terrible day.
What’s crazy is you can point to anything in our addition and there’s a story attached to it. As a therapist I regularly teach the key to happiness, the key to healing is seeing the good in things. During this build I struggled to see the good, but that’s when I realized it’s hard to see the good when you’re drowning. When you’re gasping for air, even if someone points out the good, you don’t care. You’re trying not to drown. Eventually, the waves of overwhelming events stopped and I was able to see some good. What’s awesome is for every bad thing that happened something good came out of it. For instance, the concrete walls that were too tall led to beautiful knee walls on the inside and a fancy stone wall on the outside. The skylight damage gave way to us having a beautiful wood plank ceiling, which looks so much better. (Fun fact, there are over 1200 nails in the ceiling. I know that because I had to fill and paint them all.) The $4500 window that smashed also worked out because the original was a foot too short since they originally didn’t think they could make it that big. This time they made it the full size, which means it looks so much better. With the heat pump, the extra head we bought for the upstairs has been a dream in the summer because it cools it down really well. We also ended up being eligible for a government rebate that gave us $6500 back for something else that basically meant we recouped the money we lost from the heat pump rebate debacle.
For every bad thing, there was good. That’s the beautiful thing about life; if you look for it, and you’re not drowning (and maybe there’s been time for the dust to settle), you can see the blessings. Good can come out of every situation, but sometimes you need time and space to see it. For instance, now that the majority the struggle is done, I’m finally on a path toward healing. This project that was supposed to be four to five months ended up being 38 months and saw nine people being fired (with others who should’ve been) and with a whole lot of money being thrown out the window in the process still has led to many good things. It’s focusing on these good things that will help me continue to heal. If nothing else, this addition has affirmed my belief if we work hard, try to make wise and informed decisions, and try to be kind (to a point), good things eventually happen; it’s just frustrating when it takes awhile for the good to immerge.
This week may you consider how good has come out of your struggles.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.