Tick Tock (EKKK !!)
Before opening my eyes this morn, my head was already spinning thinking about the house, somewhat startlingly if I’m going to be honest. (I’ve mentioned before), we are officially on a deadline. The lovely house we’ve been renting has SOLD so we have until its settlement to move out….JUNE 28 (!!), or about 51 days. Fifty-one days to make this-
- a real home. Electricity rough-in is complete (woo-freakin-hoo!) and plumbing started today. All of which was supposed to be DONE 2 months ago but then we got screwed over. Despite losing some money, the biggest upset at this point is probably all the time we’ve lost because of it. Realizing we’d lost our plumber/electrician was only half the issue- we then had to find new ones. Ones that could pull permits in Philly without completely torching our wallet. We did lots of research, had lots of estimates and spent time negotiating with our top picks until we agreed on a company for each job. Which took several weeks to sort.
A word on what’s worked for us hiring different contractors. Generally, word of mouth is usually great; however, we’ve had varying success with these type of recommendations. What I’ve found to be really great…GOOGLE. When searching for a plumber, for example, I visited countless websites and scoured the web for reviews. Red flags, like a couple yelpers voicing similar complaints (even amidst other positive reviews) made me shy away from calling some companies. After putting a list together of companies I’d like to call, their answering/voicemail was another ‘test’. If I got a generic voicemail that didn’t even mention a company name, I didn’t leave a message (& crossed them off my list). If a receptionist put me on hold for 10 minutes as soon as she said “hello” that was a NO, too (we got a deadline people!). Drew fielded all the actual appointments/estimates. Since we had several for each job, we were able to get lots of opinions and pick up on suggestions we hadn’t originally thought of.
Another great thing about getting several estimates is that it gave us a really great ballpark for price. When 2-3 companies give a similar estimate and then the 4th is several thousand higher, it’s easier to see how we could end up overpaying for a job.
Lastly, once we decided on a certain company, we THEN negotiated for a final (lower) price. We’ve been able to get a lower price on every job thus far…so my advice? We consider an estimate a starting bid..NEGOTIATE!
Our next big steps (in order) are:
- electricity
- plumbing
- sprayfoam insulation (still need to find someone)
- drywall
- flooring (refinishing downstairs floors & installing new floors on 2nd story)
AND THEN we can get to all the other needed livable stuff, like a bathroom and kitchen. Having our slick rick electrician/plumber skip out on his contract was such a mega halt and we’re now scrambling to make up the time lost— especially because of our new, quickly approaching deadline.
Drew’s been super busting his hump over at the house. I should make it clear that while we are hiring people as necessary, Drew’s been over there every single day since the beginning doing a full days work all day er day. But remember how L&I sniffed out our trail? Well that just means we have to do everything SUPER by the book, which means there’s certain stuff “we” can’t do on our own, which happens to include lots of permits (I think we’ve had 4 or 5 pulled at this point {!})…and since only licensed/insured/permitteded peeps can pull those permits in the city SO, we’ve had to hire a lot of different people, all of whom, on top of getting down & dirty himself,
Drew’s had to schedule, organize and coordinate. And they’ve pretty much taken over the street (yeah, they’re all with us…)
But with the countdown on, we’ve got to figure out a way to amp things up even more -well, if we want to have a toilet & stove, for instance, when we move in.
It’s (super) go time.
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