Back to square one

We had some disheartening news this week.

The first of the builder's estimates has come in for our house, and it's almost 50% above our upper budget limit. It's looking unlikely we'll be able to build the house Phil designed for us. The the other two builders' estimates will probably be pretty similar; if anything, they're likely to be higher, as they're both registered master builders and the bloke who's already submitted his quote isn't.

We'll wait until we get the other two quotes in, then we'll make an appointment to see Phil and discuss our options, but with one third of the total cost needing to be trimmed, and with few frills, only one bedroom, and the fact that we're already planning on doing most of the interior fit-out ourselves, there's not much room to make the radical cuts needed.

As well as being disappointed, we also feel disgruntled with Phil, because his estimate of what the design would cost was so far out. We made our budgetary constraints clear to him when we had our initial meeting, and he assured us he could design something that would come within them, give or take the usual 10% margin of error. We knew we were taking a calculated risk when we employed an architect to draw up plans, but it still smarts a little, knowing we've spent $3,500 for nothing.

So it looks as if we're back to square one with our 'grand design', and we'll need to spend more time re-evaluating all the options open to us. On the positive side, the collapse of our plans may force us down a more adventurous path - of building our own home out of adobe bricks, for example, or of living in a yurt. While neither of these possibilities could be considered an easy option, either of them would give us an exciting change of lifestyle, and an opportunity for personal growth.

Maybe things not going according to plan isn't such a bad thing after all!

Helen