Final draft plans

Merry Xmas

Just want to say Merry Xmas everyone, I hope all those who read this had a wonderful day.

Our plans are still on track, we have the contract sitting on our coffee table, our house plans have gone from white to yellow and as soon as everyone gets back after Xmas it will go to council. We have engaged a demolition company for the end of February, 2010 should be a big year.

Ouuuccch!!! Footing costs

As I have stated, we live in Pasadena and I always knew that the soil in my area was below average, what I did not know was how far below average it was. Our quote had provisioned $18000 for footings, we were told that this should be very close to the mark, oh how wrong he was. 

Our soil is type E soil, E for EXTREME, E for expensive, E for Eeeek. I was expecting $22000 or $25000 absolutely worst case, the costing came in at $32000, I felt physically sick. Our sales guy said he should be able to reduced a little but we are still going to over estimate by 14k.

However, after getting over the shock horror of it we looked at our original budget and our target build budget of 230k might not get blown by that much, if at all. I had allowed a 10k misc. figure in there and now that seems to be working in our favour.