If ever you have considered doing major work to your house like adding on or doing extensive renovation work, the internet and smart people everywhere seem to agree on one thing: Make sure you have extra money in your budget for unexpected expenses.
The experts warn that your contractor could find unexpected problems when they start tearing into your home...and of course, they are right. However, I wanted to write a post not about the doom and gloom of uncovering an unexpected and expensive problem -- but about how we have gotten a little extra during the course of our project.
In our case (knock on wood!), up to this point the project has gone relatively smoothly but what we are discovering is that once you go so far into something it is easy to justify some additional expense. I'll give you a couple examples.
We knew that after the addition was on, we would be siding the house, not just the addition but the whole house. Ok, great. If you know that ahead of time you can budget for it. Perfect. However, what we didn't really understand was how poorly the old part of the home was insulated.
Well, if you know you're going to be tearing off the siding anyway, why not use it as an excuse to better insulate the house? Wonderful idea right? Sure, but it will cost you!
Here's another one: The electrician is going to come out to wire the addition which is slated to be wired to meet code (anything else is extra). Well, ok - but if the electrician is going to be here anyway, why not have them wire for the lighting above the island and maybe add some wiring to the old living room. See, again, extra.
All this is to say that even if you are fortunate enough to avoid hidden costs, you may still find yourself saying: "It would be stupid NOT to do this extra thing now" and so all those experts are totally right. If it is at all possible to budget more for your project, you should. I know I did not want to hear this while I was preparing for our project -- but sometimes the truth is inescapable.
We always have the option to not be extra, but it might cost us more in the long run. Le sigh.
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