Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Crushed

Yesterday in the evening after rushing home from work I had the long anticipated talk with the architect. It was long and winded as usual, but that's what I expected.
It went fairly well as we addressed my questions regarding material choice and construction code and looked through the plans. There are a couple of necessary changes, but that's detail work.

Then, in the end came the big bang. I asked him for an official cost estimate. He talked and talked as usual and then gave me a figure that sent me to the floor. €1000/sq. m. That's roughly €60 000 for the entire place, give or take 15%. Twice as much as my worst night mare. That's US$ 90 000. Almost close to what my grandmother paid for the entire place... needless to say I was crushed for the rest of the evening.

I had considered investing maybe €10 000 myself so I would "own" a significant share of the building... if it's really that expensive that'd be 1/6 of the total... not much.

Afterwards we had a big family talk and looked for solutions. First of all we'll have a big talk with the architect to see where we can save money. Then we'll try to locate used materials to cut down that part of the price tag - if we manage to get cheap brick from a demolition company or something like that we can take off a significant part of the bill. Same is true for lumber. Construction grade lumber is expensive!
Last we'll have to see if we can match the estimate and our budget.

Wish me luck!

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