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So.
I’ve finished putting together the rough quotes for the construction of the
tiny house, and have heard back with final quotes on a few things. BIL had
given his rough-rough estimate, as a guy who’s trained in quoting out
projects, and a guy who literally just finished building an addition on the
cabin on the property, and my estimates were approximately twice what he’d
said. So he looked at it, and…
oh. What with the whole gestures broadly global situation, the cost of
construction materials has increased. Like. a lot. like a lot a lot.
So the question I’m now facing is…. do I go ahead with this project, or do
I wait, six to nine months, for prices to possibly come back down?
Plywood costs four or five times what it normally does. Roofing materials
are double; insulation is one and a half times higher than normal. The only
thing that’s not wildly inflated is rough-cut lumber, which is only
slightly inflated, currently.
I have or can get the money to build it anyway; I’d tentatively budgeted
for the cost of the pre-cut kit from the company, and BIL said he could do
the cutting instead and save me three-quarters the price. Now it looks like
it’ll only be a small savings over the original cost of the kit (which I
suspect is now more expensive; I haven’t re-checked it). But, I can do it.
It’s not too late to postpone the thing. It’s not like i’m currently paying
rent which I can save by moving into the tiny house.
But… BIL has made time to do it this year. He says he can make the time
next year as well, but who can guarantee anything?
And the really critical thing is, there’s no guarantee prices will come
back down. Once people have gotten used to paying sixty dollars for a
sheet of plywood, there’s little incentive for the price to come back
down. And what if the economy continues to go haywire? What if prices
increase even more? I’ll be so upset with myself for not going ahead with
the project while I could.
We were supposed to have started it last fall, Dad and I, so.
I really want to just do it. But the difference in price on a project of
this scale is several thousand dollars. So it’s significant.
There’s no right answer, there’s no clear choice, I just have to make a
choice, and my natural disinclination to make a decision is telling me to
delay it, and basically everything else about me is saying I should just do
it because there’s no guarantee prices will go back down and I have the
money right now and if I wait longer things might be even more
expensive.
But. I can’t decide, and I pretty much have to choose by the end of the
week.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrgggghhhh.
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