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Is this the bloke whos quoted you the business end of 200 grand including the vat and professional fees?
Hes set his stall out very clearly by giving that price out from the start, yes, you might be able to cut a few k off here and there, a slightly more budget kitchen and windows, floor etc etc but I suspect the sad reality is that most of the fat within the figures are his crews wages for the job and a 40k profit for his company afterwards. I.e there will be precious little to take the scissors to unless hes prepared to earn less from the job.
princeperch-
No this was a quote that came in cheaper, and I did sit down with him earlier in the week before we went to see this other place to talk about a few areas where he's been over-generous.
The place I saw today crept over budget (by less than 10%, impressively) and it might be the case that he's mindful of trying to avoid that happening again by being overly cautious this time - £20k for a kitchen which we can almost certainly trim down, £13k for bifolds and a couple of windows which is also hopefully much more than we'd need...
tbc
Partly that I think, but they started late last year and are only just finishing it off. The builder has been very up front about costs and the guy whose house it is only has positives to say about him, but I feel like we need to sit down and pick apart where the costs are coming from and how we can get them down. Some of it is caution I think, as they've allowed £20k for the kitchen alone, but I don't think we'll get near that.