I’ve kind of been debating on whether or not to write this post. I don’t want to come across as some rich jerk that screwed up. Nor do I want this to be interpreted as a ‘woe is me, we have no money’ (especially by our friends and family) type of post. Since one of my goals with this blog was to help people out in doing similar projects, I opted to write. First off, especially for family & friends, we aren’t broke or destitute. Yet.
What we are finding, though, is that here at the end of the project there are a ton of things that we need to purchase for the house that were not included in the original bid. I’d say that these purchases fall into two categories. First are things for the house that are needed that weren’t included in the bid. This would be, in our case, lighting, knobs & pulls, and landscaping. The second category are things that we want for the house, but aren’t necessarily required to build it. Furniture, alarm and other asides fall into this boat. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
Thus far, we’ve been able to put most of our purchases on our loan. It’s like playing with the houses money. You know when you have a pocket full of chips and it is really simple to keep playing. The problem that we have is that we’ve left the casino and are trying to buy a couple of t-shirts and the store doesn’t take chips. They want cash (or at least a check), so we are back to the casino to cash in our chips. What is really amazing, is how few of these shops take credit cards, too. So much for free airline ticket.
If you’re working on a project like this, take this as a word of caution. As you get down to the end, be prepared for unplanned for expenses to rear their ugly heads.
