One of the consequences of our flight landing nearly 4 1/2 hours late on Tuesday is that we missed the pickup window for one of our FedEx packages. I guess I should have seen that coming. Just another chapter in the ongoing saga of our troubles with FedEx. But that was only the start of our disappointment upon returning.
We had the big meeting with our architect and builder yesterday afternoon. The news is not good. Really, really not good. I knew the estimate would be over our budget. I was guessing it would be 50% over. That turned out to be optimistic. It was 100% over, as in double. I knew we were in trouble when I quickly added up the numbers on the first page and we were already over our budget.
So, while we talked through options for reducing cost by reducing the foundation size, in the back of my mind I just kept thinking that the discussion was pointless. All of the things we talked about made sense if we were trying to cut 25-30% off the cost, but 50? I just didn’t see any way we were going to get there without a drastic design change. A total gut job, in fact.
So, the architect will go back and make the changes and we’ll review the new layout and the builder will do a new estimate and it will still be way too much. What happens after that, I don’t know. Right now I just want to cry.