Opinions sought on protracted house rewire

[Lacan07]

Hi all

Not necessarily old house related but I was wondering if any of you 'old heads' had an opinion on this?

When I bought my house the first thing I did was to initiate a full house rewire and 1st fix was soon completed bar the kitchen space. As I started to learn more about old houses (and the unusual nature of this particular house) I quickly realised 2nd fix wasn't going to happen any time soon. I got him back to power up the upper floor almost 3 years later! I obviously aplogised for the unusual nature of the job and he seemed fine with it.

After this I paid off another chunk of the original quote and sent him an email laying out what was left to do against what I owed him but I'm now wondering if holding him to the original quote is unfair?

On the one hand this isn't your standard job and it will certainly involve more visits to site (he lives local), and obviously I really need him to stay on board and sign it off at the end! On the flip side all materials required where purchased at the start. I've ended up doing a few things that were included in the quote, like fit the bathroom fan (he only wired it up). He also originally assigned his junior partner to the 1st fix and it was quite slap dash. I've had to go round redoing a lot of the plastic conduit, clipping wires, etc, although that doesn't really bother me.

Would you offer something extra over the original quote? I really try to see things from a trades point of view these days, its very easy to get tied up in trying to save money.

 

[a twig]

I’d just suggest that when he comes round for the next piece of work - have the conversation with him face to face - “Quote was a long time ago - I’ve done some of the work but appreciate the job is taking forever - you still happy?” etc and see what he says

 

[ThornhillMike]

Twig's neatly summarised what I was going to say. We committed to a full rewire and re-plumb. On both the materials were agreed and paid for, but the labour was PAYG over a two year period plus. Both trades see me as a "valuable client" (read, I've spent a lot with them) so they are very happy to flex with the house (and boy have we done some flexing). Trades aren't usually shy in coming forward over increased costs; I'd have a general chat with him but personally I'd stay shy of basing it around cost.

 

[Kearn]

On our project, there was no pint trying to reach a quote for many jobs, plumbing and electrics included. Materials are what they are then we work on a day rate.

Ours is such that we’ve had to make much of it up as we go and change decisions regularly, take a few steps back etc. anyone trying to price up front would’ve either added such a massive amount of contingency it wouldn’t have made sense, or got to the point where they were working for free and tried to cut corners or got resentful.