Busy, busy, busy!

Lovely walk along the beach at Portobello this afternoon.

And now for an update on the big Edinburgh flat refurbishment………

Meeting with a new builder (recommended by ‘very lovely architect’) first thing this morning.  I did my fiercest woofing when I first met him but I soon calmed down.  Ann says I’m a good judge of character and he seemed to know what he was talking about.  Don’t they all?  He’s coming back on Friday with a plumber, an electrician and a kitchen designer from Howdens.  And then he’ll get a proper detailed quote to us by next Monday.

Another meeting with a guy that Ann has already seen.  He was supposed to be explaining the 'big huge quote' he gave us, in more detail, but didn’t have anything prepared so is now saying he’ll get something to us by Thursday.  But even if we do choose him to do the work he probably won’t be able to start for another 6 weeks?!  Grrrrr…… He also wants us to meet with a kitchen designer from Howdens. 

It’s actually a bit frustrating, (to say nothing about time consuming), the way all these contractors have accounts at different Howdens.  You would have thought that in this day & age, a kitchen designer could come and design a kitchen and file it on a central Howdens computer.  Then, when the client decides which contractor they’re going to employ, Howdens could adjust the price of the kitchen accordingly.  We’re assuming the contractors with the biggest accounts get the biggest discounts?  Refurbing a flat is soooo difficult.

Same with flooring……………  We’d seen some really nice real wood oak flooring in Homebase.  Apparently real wood is not as good as ‘engineered flooring’.  Don’t even ask why? Something to do with the flooring ‘moving’ after a while?  Have to admit ‘cowboy builders’ also told us that!  Wish these guys wouldn’t bamboozle us with technical stuff.  Obviously we do not want to buy flooring without seeing real live samples, so off we went to the ‘trade’ flooring place.  Hate ‘trade’ places.  The flooring was very nice but ‘trade’ places will only divulge their prices to trades people who have an account with them.  It is very, very irritating.

Then we planned to go to ‘City Plumbing’ near Portobello because that is where Contractor No. 1 said he used, but actually by the time I’d had my walk, Ann was too tired and wasn’t sure of the exact location of ‘City Plumbing’ anyway.  So we didn’t bother.  She only wanted to look at shower enclosures and I guess that can be done online.

It’s very, very difficult to know whether these builders are telling us the truth.  All of them say that (even with the VAT added) they can get us better quality stuff at cheaper prices than we could get ourselves?  Can they?  Can’t they?  We don’t actually know.  Obviously if we went to ‘B&Q’ or ‘Homebase’ or ‘Wickes’ or any of the other well known DIY shops we would know how much we were paying for things.  But………… if the contractors can get better quality stuff for the same/cheaper price than ‘on the high street’ then obviously that would be better.

#somuchtothinkabout

 Getting bored of ranting now.  Onwards & upwards!