With respect to our 75k budget, it was
just under. One thing we discovered is there is a price-point for most materials/products that if we’d opted to go under, we’d have rapidly compromised the quality of our living environment. This couldn’t have been more true than for the kitchen.
We kept meticulous details of our costs which we updated every day, in a spreadsheet with both projected and actual costs – this guided decisions as we went. We executed decisions with restraint, and kept our mission statement front of mind with every decision.
In the end, we kept within our budget, and we don’t believe we’ve over-capitalised on our house.
The various trades and services invoice totals came in at roughly the following (including materials for each trade):
- Building: $13k
- Double Glazing: $20k
- Electrical: $3k
- Plumbing: $5.5k
- Brickwork: $1.5k
- Kitchen: $15k
- Plastering: $1.5k
- Painting: $7.5k
- Flooring: $7.5k
We should acknowledge that we worked very hard to streamline the project, to avoid incurring extra travel costs and maximise every visit made by each tradesperson. Working closely with our builder, we ensured that the “to-dos” were clear each day for everyone involved. We also took care of a lot of the “in between” jobs like cleaning, tidying and some dumping of rubbish. To avoid short visits by tradespeople we undertook a little work on some small details ourselves. We searched for and acquired materials for certain jobs in some cases. In effect, as well as project managing, we also contributed time and effort to the project where it made sense to keep our tradespeople from working on the “little stuff” (and stayed right out of the way on the big stuff!), in turn, making small savings here and there.
With respect to our 10 week time goal, it ended up closer to 12. This was due to the aforementioned points about confirming orders a little late on our part. This wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of things – and something we’ll bear in mind next time.