Builder-guilt

As a mother I know plenty about guilt; I didn't breastfeed, I let my kids watch TV during the week and to top it off some afternoons when I have managed to force them into the garden I lock the back door so they can't come back inside.

There's plenty more to anguish over but at present this guilt pales in comparison to what I am experiencing in relation to obtaining builders quotes.  My whole life I've have it drummed into me to get three quotes for everything, it just plain common sense!  Consequently I am now the world's best bargain hunter (have you heard the one about the $1050 boots I got for $150?) and never feel comfortable paying full price or buying anything unless I have visited every shop and supplier around town to make sure I'm getting the best deal.

So why in the world do I feel so dreadful getting three different builders to quote on our renovation?

I think the reason is that we know the builder we would prefer to use - a lovely man Ross Stone from Prestige Building Group.  Our building designer introduced us when we first started on the plans and he has been a font of advice already.  He has given us an estimate price which is pretty close to what we budgeted (I will be happy to share this with you once I receive the other estimates).  For some people I know, this would close the deal - they would sign up with Ross pronto.

My builder-guilt stems not only from being unwilling to commit to Ross immediately, its because I feel that I'm wasting the other builders time.  Wasting these poor guys time when business is so tough at the moment.  Wasting their time when they could be at home with their families.  Wasting their time when they could be quoting on a job they have more of a chance of winning. Wasting their time when they could be at the pub having a beer after a long days work.

Because we really do want to use Ross.  Of course this may not end up being the case - one of the other builders quotes could be tens and ten of thousands of dollars cheaper.  But emotionally I feel that I would then be questioning why they are so cheap anyway.   Am I just going through the motions of getting the quotes to appease another type of guilt - the guilt of not doing the right thing?  Or is a case of first with the head, then with the heart?


I've been trying to appease the builder-guilt with the knowledge that builders factor quoting time into each job and if they don't win the job they just add it onto the next job they do win (or so I have been told). But then I just start feeling guilty about the poor sod who might end up paying for my actions down the track.

There's are real guilt-a-thon going on round here!


How many quotes did you get if you have done a renovation?  Did you choose for cost or like-ability?  Any regrets?

Measure twice, cut once.

My grandfather, Bill Seward, always told me to measure twice and cut once.  I have discovered when you apply this principle to developing plans it's more like measure fifty times, pace things things out at least thirty-two times, draw it on the ground with chalk and try to envisage what furniture would fit where twenty times and then have about seventeen anxiety attacks that perhaps the economy is stuffed and you shouldn't be renovating at all.

So that's what James and I have been doing recently and is the reason you may have noticed my blog has been quite of late.  However, we think with a few tweaks the latest iteration of our plans will give us what we need. Plus the economy needs building industry needs stimulating so we might as well be the trendsetters.

You may recall in my last instalment I had to tell our building designer that whilst his plans were great they weren't going to work for us. About a fortnight ago we received new plans, straight away we were much happier - the whole thing seemed to provide us with the space and the requirements we wanted and was along the lines of what we always thought would happen to this house - basically a box on the back.

Click on the picture to see the plans clearly.

Peter Latemore said to have a good think about it all and get back to him.  You might be interested to know the approach James and I took to considering the layout and functionality of each room. It may seem over the top but remember I am anal and James is a business analyst...you put these things together and you get this...a spreadsheet which lists each room and the things we needed to think about for each room eg light, security, storage, entry/exit, heating/cooling etc.  You can see the spreadsheet here and the list of things that that we came up with here.

Once we felt that we had measured, paced, discussed and debated enough we made a time to meet with Peter and ran through what we thought needed to change.  The main things are that the pantry will swap places with the laundry, the drying area will move to the side of the house and the screen that divides the deck into two areas will be removed.  One of the windows in the kitchen will be removed to make space for a hutch for the kettle etc.  There are few other things - I guess we will get another plan soon that I can show you.

So now we are approaching the stage of the working drawings being produced and council approval.  We also need to start confirming the cost  - that will be the topic of my next post and I guess what has been worrying us most of all - BUDGET!!

The best laid plans...

Does anyone else get scared of tape measures?  Functional tools but when they retract the zooming sharp sides freak me out, I'm terrified I'll end up with a massive cut, like a paper cut but bigger.  This week I've confronted my fear as I've obsessively been measuring lengths, widths and trying to envisage room sizes because (drum roll please)...we received our plans. 

Here is the existing floorplan:

 and here is what was proposed:

Proposed floor plan

I received the plans at 9am on Monday morning with a busy day ahead  of me - excitement combined with excruciating pain, all I wanted to do was rush home and feast my eyes. 

What an overwhelming experience it was when I finally had the chance to look at them closely.  As a novice I quickly realised reading a plan isn't as easy as reading a book - understanding perspectives, measurements, elevations, roof lines - these things take time. From my experience this week, getting a feel for a plan isn't something that should be rushed.

Something that was immediately obvious, even to my untrained eye, was despite the plan ticking nearly every box on our very detailed brief it didn't solve a fundamental problem with the way we live.

It seemed that our current issue of the kitchen area being too small for two growing boys would remain somewhat. What we had wanted was a big family dining table (not just breakfast bar) adjacent to the kitchen plus a small lounge area.

James and I spent about 4 hours trying to work out different ways our need could be met with the proposed plan.   Changing the family room to a meals zone seemed like a very big space just for a table (it's not big enough for dining plus lounge) and the space adjacent to the breakfast bar called "reading" just seemed too small, I felt it would be redundant.

I went to bed feeling dreadful, in my odd way I was feeling as though not getting the plans right first go was all my fault. Was my brief too brief after all?  Were we unclear about what we really wanted?  Were we overwhelmed by Peter's enthusiasm for his initial concept of adding an extra bedroom, forgetting about what we really wanted?

I woke the next day determined to resolve this and called Peter as soon as I could.  I felt very nervous making the call, it was like ringing to tell someone you think their baby is ugly.  He reassured me not to worry, that this was a normal part of the design process and that we could resolve it.  We told him our ideas and with his suggestions we came up with this (the pink lines are what the new plans will be - hard to see I know, hoping for another plan soon!) :

We've spent the weekend with the tape measure (panic!), pacing out rooms and trying to envisage the various spaces.  It's interesting to observe the different approaches different people take to visualising spaces; some can do it on paper, some need to stand in certain directions, others need to measure out a space in a completely different place to see how large a particular size is.  Whatever works!  James and I have drawn chalk lines on the ground and in an OMG moment I didn't freak out when I saw he had drawn on the kitchen wall in permanent marker - it's all going soon enough anyway!!

The roof line - we have decided to "settle" for a hip roof over the fancy skillion option Peter provided - by doing so we will save enough to put in a powder room.

The deck - anyone ready for a BBQ?

So it's been a big week, an exciting week.  What have I learned?

When you are on a tight budget you can't get everything you want  (farewell kitchen desk nook) - it's about getting what you need (apparently I need a butlers pantry! - I didn't expect to get one! have you got one?  Do you like it?)

What do you think of our plans?  (if you can't see them leave a comment below and I will try to upload in a different manner)

PS - a BIG congratulations goes to our lovely designer Peter Latemore, not only was it his birthday his week but he won the "Designing the Dream" Award at the Building Designers of Queensland Brisbane  North Awards.  If only we had the budget that would have been spent on that house....

Brief briefs? Not for me.

It has been suggested that I am slightly anal.

This outlandish claim was made after I wrote a list for a new cleaner describing how each room and item of furniture should be cleaned.  Apparently cross-tabulating the list with appropriate cleaning products to use was where I crossed the line... 

To me this list just made good sense. Ensuring a job is done right the first time is easier than correcting mistakes down the track.

Consequently it will be no surprise to you that I took the job of briefing our designer, outlining what we wanted to achieve in our renovation, extremely seriously.   Having never written this type of brief before I wasn't sure what to include, so turning to my friend Google I asked "how to brief an architect" and "architect brief template". This research delivered lots of ideas and questions to consider when putting the brief together.

I also spent many pleasurable hours looking at house porn; Australian House & Garden, Inside Out, Home Beautiful and the hottest of all Architectural Digest.  I salivated over the dreamlike images, ripping and tearing out pages, slapping glue on the pretty pictures to create a scrapbook of visuals to stimulate our thinking.

The end product?  I produced the brief (which is pretty long) using the following headings, you can read the full document by clicking here.

• Who are we, what are we like & what do we like?
• What is our house like now and what do we like about it?
• What don’t we like?
• What we would like done: Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 
• What are our priorities, must haves, would be nice to have...
• In a perfect world the house would have...
• What are our must haves...
• Would be nice to haves...
• What what we envisage each room to include where possible: Kitchen / Family room, Laundry, Outdoor area, Main Bedroom, Garage

We sent the brief to our building designer, Peter Latemore, before he came over to view the house and then come up with an initial concept.  He said he hadn't received such a detailed brief before. Had I crossed that line again?  Apparently not! He said the brief helped him understand our goals before he even crossed our threshold.  It would also avoid him having to drag information out of us and providing a greater insight into what our goals are.  In fact he had never received such a detailed brief before and was extremely pleased to receive it. It would help him get the design right upfront.

See mum, nothing wrong with being so anal after all!!  And who wants brief briefs after all - they just aren't a good fit.