Homeowner’s Blog about Home Improvement
Categories: Coral Gables, Life & Style, Real Estate News
hiHOMEOWNER’S BLOG: Earth Date 08.0321.00
Its been well over two weeks since my last entry. I received my drawings back from the city along with a list of comments. I also received the comments back from the Health Dept. Now I am trying to get my drafts-person to contact me to do the revisions to the drawings. I’ve been trying all week to meet with him, but one thing or another gets in the way. Today is Friday and still he has not come by to pick up the comments. However, he tells me he has the revisions for the septic tank permit and is waiting for the engineer to sign and seal the drawing - the engineer has been out of the office Thursday and Friday due to Easter. It always amazes me how religious people get around Easter and Christmas.
In the mean time I met with a second contractor and received his budget figures. There was a big difference between this contractor and the second regarding price - roughly about $150K difference. However once I started to review the number I saw many items missing in the estimate. I have to put both estimate on a spreadsheet and compare them to be able to evaluate them. I still have one more contractor who tells me he is going to provide me with a budget figure, but nothing yet. Yesterday I met with an AC Contractor to get his imput about the design of the air conditioning system. He will be giving me some design information and an estimate by next week.
As you can see this process of permitting takes time and patience. But so far the building dept has been performing very well. My wife is getting exasperated with the length of time to get a permit - today someone was telling me about this person in Miami Beach that took 2 years to get a permit. At 3 months so far, I am doing very well.
I continue to find this very interesting. Please keep the posts coming. Regarding comparing estimates, I am surprised that there is not a standard bid form. When I was in advertising and collecting bids for very expensive television commercial productions (sometimes more than half a million dollars), there was a standard form that all the companies used. It made it easy to compare bids and to see what was left out