And, yes, we are being paid time and materials weekly. I would never do it differently. Otherwise the poor owner would have a million change orders against a fixed bid by now and it would be a full time job trying to estimate and manage change orders. I do make sure he understands all of the cost implications for every one of his decisions. For example, he suddenly wanted a tankless water heater. I had to research the one we would need and lay out all the costs. He decided he could change that out in the future.
This owner is so busy and he does not seem to have a checkbook handy. I get calls every day “Oh, can you pay X that is being delivered today or I’m forwarding an invoice from Mr Y, can you please pay it”. But, he’s very prompt about transferring cash to my account when I submit the week ending accounting.
Oh my. Someone is going bananas with that shower and stairs… Why does he want an electric fireplace when gas is available?! Although I have to thank him for the recommendation because we will need one for our new condo that does not have gas (buying a pad for the kid to live in because rents here are just OMGyowzacrazy).
He likes the contemporary look of the long skinny fireplaces set into the wall or coming out of the wall as a ‘feature’. We just finished capping off the gas line down in the garage and pulling everything out of the fireplace to close it up. He better not change his mind now:) But, he’s not going to because the 72" fireplace insert has already been delivered.
My niece has floating stairs in her place—one thing is it’s pretty dangerous for young kids (they can fall between the steps) but otherwise looks very cool.
That really is crazy. I can’t imagine preferring a fake electric fireplace to a gas fireplace. I’m so glad cb’s fee structure for this job includes an hourly rate.
I know! I would not trade mine for an electric one (but we are stuck with electricity in the condo). Hmmm… maybe gas fp produces too much heat by SD standards so he wants the flickering of the flames without the heat?
When we originally started this project, a whole 5 weeks ago but seems like a million days of changes, my recommendation was to build a bump out all the way to the ceiling to emphasize the tall roof and trick it out with beautiful tile. Kind of visually enlarging the small existing fireplace. Now our kitchen is going to be larger and I feel we need some interest on other side of the room. The big empty wall. Was going to do a gas only fireplace but he wanted one of these giant fireplaces to balance out the humongous 80” TV being mounted above the fireplace
The Ortal fp in the house we almost (almost!) got had a GIANT Sony TV mounted over it. It was a $10,000 TV back in the early 2017! What is up with men and giant TVs?!
Psst… if you want your client to p’ss away a few extra dollars, tell him there is that thing called Electric Mirror. It is a mirror for the bathroom that has a TV built in… it is waterproof so he can use it in his steam shower to watch his retirement fund go down the drain on CNBC while showering! When the TV is off, it looks just like a mirror. How do I know about this stuff? Let’s say we stayed at a Fairmont in BC and someone got hooked on having Cramer’s bald head yapping out of the bathroom mirror. It is a gorgeous mirror but the TV ruins my morning zen!!!
You got it! We have The Life of Birds DVDs narrated by Attenborough, and that was the first thing that popped in my mind when I saw Consolation’s comment! Lol. We use those DVDs to entertain the cats. I thought that bird was fascinating!!!
