…to the point we were nearly calling our renovations off and giving in..well I was! Today Richard had asked me to get a quote for new floor joists that we have discovered we need…so I called for 5″ x 3″ joists…about 40 metres in length! The man told me it would be “three, oh, five a metre plus vat” So I said thank you and times’d £305 by 40 and then by 1.15 and got £14,000!!!!!!!!! The joists are something we hadn’t budgeted for as we had no idea they were bad. So a £14K overspend is a really really bad thing and pretty much all of our very generous (or so we thought) contingency fund! We’re hoping our contingency fund can buy us each a nice pressy at the end and also pay a chunk of our new debts off as we both liked being mortgage free….no chance now you think?? Cue Richard waking up and asking me how my day was…so I launched into…awful…we’ll just have to be cowboys and pretend we haven’t seen the bad joists, either that or we are in trouble………..
Richard just looked at me really confusedly when I told him the price. He then said we’ll have to phone round and see what others are charging etc… (Bear in mind Richard had been awake about 10 minutes so its no surprise he was being dim!!) I then went off and got our trade catalogue where floor joists are £1.90 + vat…… Yep you’ve got it….when the man said “three, oh, five” he meant three POUNDS and five pence!!!!!!!! NOT £305.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still maintain the man should have been clearer and its not normal to say three, oh, five when you’re talking £3.05……. So yes re-do the maths and the total is £140 which is totally manageable and we are back to doing our renovation properly!!!! I still can’t believe I didn’t realise £14K was way too much!!!!!!! In my defence I was just thinking 3″ x 5″ is a big chunk of wood and so its pretty much a whole tree??!! ….which may well cost £300???
3 kids and 6 and a half minis 
Oops.