By mid afternoon, we had a hole, and they were putting in the new sewer line from the house to the street.
The excavator guy suggested I warn the neighbours that their fence may fall into the hole. Check. Good thing the neighbours are friendly. Let's try to keep them that way.
And I got a quote from a framer. He can't start until October, but his price is excellent. And he's willing to put our first floor on earlier so we can get the basement ready for sewer connection, and close up the hole.
I then spoke to the distributor of my Certainteed faux cedar siding, and they finally have samples, I can pick them up on Friday. Whoohoo! I feel like I should buy a lotto ticket.
But then I contacted the guys who connect the sewer from the edge of our lot to the middle of the street. They can't schedule us until November, which is about when we'll need them. But that's also too far into winter, so there's a good chance we'll have to pay a $4000 "damn it's cold" premium. Boo. There's another guy we can book, but he's $1000 more. So, do we risk having to pay $4k more by trying to save $1k? Or do we book the guy who's $1k more, and hope we're ready for him earlier? I called the more expensive guy's office today, and they seem to be only about 2 weeks out. So I think I'll book the first guy for November. If we're looking like we're going to be ready sooner, then I'll call the second guy.
Today's gotcha came from the foundation guy. He was thinking of starting Saturday, so he stopped by to investigate today. He wants the wall of dirt next to the neighbour's house shored up with concrete before he starts. Buh. In addition to an extra $6k, that may take a few weeks to get done. So, working on that.
I got a price on the one tile I was considering for the bathroom floor. It's almost 3 times the price of the first one. So I think I'm going to go grab the cheaper one if I still can.
My other task today was a visit to Direct Buy. We've been thinking about making some house purchases from there in order to save money. But it's been a giant question mark. We had heard that the membership was somewhere in the vicinity of $5-6k. And then, how much do you save on stuff? I went in prepared for a timeshare sales pitch. It was much more relaxing. I watched a video about how evil retailers are, how revolutionary Direct Buy is, and the reason for their secrecy. It's due to the agreements with the wholesalers. If the wholesale price of a couch is $600, and Leons is selling it for $1500, and DB advertised that their members got that couch for $600 (plus shipping and handling), then random people would go into Leons and demand a discount. Leons might be so mad at the wholesalers that they'd stop selling that brand. And since Leons is a bigger reseller than Direct Buy, the manufacturers demand that Direct Buy keep the prices secret. Fair enough. The rest of the time there was spent looking at the various products I could get. Since I was prepared for the hard sell, "sign up now or never sign up" demands, I had gone in with a long list of products and selling prices from other sources. They weren't able to give me instant pricing on my kitchen cabinets and windows. All the other things I checked saved me a little. I decided that on appliances, flooring, countertops and even my fancy Fleurco shower base, we could probably save enough to justify the membership. But, you have to order everything from them, pay for shipping to their warehouse, and then arrange to have it picked up from their website at the opposite corner of the city. So, that makes the membership a little less worthwhile. I'm getting quotes on the windows and cabinets, so we can probably save enough there to cover the membership, and then the rest of it becomes pure savings, and a little more worth dealing with the ordering process. I now have a month to decide.
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