dragonlady7

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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. (Your picture was not posted)