Hard, Grey and F*!king Expensive

Our concrete slab was poured last week. So we are now the proud owners of dirt AND concrete. For the past six months we have lived with the fear of ye olde "non fixed contract item". Basically everything for our house has been costed and fixed into the contract price - except for the concrete. The builders allow for 40 cubic metres of concrete and they don't really know how much will be required for each job until they actually get out there and sus out the soil and so on and so forth.

So the whole way along we've been worried about these extra charges. I asked the builder one day, back in February how much the guy 3 blocks up from us had to pay in extra charges and without skipping a beat, replied, "10".
Me: "10 what?"
Him: "10 grand"
Me: "Oh"
I didn't hear the next twenty minutes of conversation - I was replaying his "10" over and over in my head as though he'd just told me I had terminal cancer or something. And how could he be so blase about it? Bastard.

So Stu and I have been working on a "worst case scenario" of $10K, however honestly we never thought ours would cost that much. I mean, surely karma was going to be gentle...Stu's a vegetarian for God's sake, that's got to count for something in the scheme of the universe. And he cycles to work - so less carbon emissions. And what about that injured bird I found on the road that day on the way to Sunday School as a child and I talked Dad into dropping it into a vet? - Yep, I was pretty sure I had the whole karma thing worked out and we were sitting pretty.

A few weeks went by and I got an email from the builder saying that the footings had been completed and he went into some detail about how much deeper they had to go, 750mm deeper. "Oh, 750mm...I see" (translated to mean "right, um, what the hell does that mean? Is that alot? or hardly anything?") Either way, I felt like he was preparing us for a whopping big invoice.

A few days later he called to say the concrete had been poured and offered to meet us on site so he could go through the concrete job with us. What's there to go through? Here's the concrete. It's grey and it's hard.

A few days later we get another call saying he's done the paperwork and wants to come to our house to go through it with us. Paperwork? Isn't it just a one pager? This is now getting scarier by the day. We start panicking that he's talking in the ballpark of $20,000, $25,000? Surely not more than $30,000?! So when he actually comes over and hands me an invoice for $9,300 for the extra concrete charge I actually felt relieved. Oh, $9,300? Is that all? Small change...not a problem. Easy Peasy.

And so, almost with a spring in my step, I march upstairs to get my cheque book and write out our cheque for $42,623 - all for grey, hard concrete.

Half an hour later reality sets in. That was pretty much our worst case scenario. Ouch.