So we hit a small snag I had been working with a company for the excavation local to my area called LaRue. Large company been around forever, knew the area everything seemed good.
But the guy is a "Good ol Boy" and was cagey on getting me an actual quote and hates the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority. He took a look at what I had approval to do and said it wasn't a good idea, he had a better way of grading the land and he would do it his way and it would be fine. But again, not giving a quote or anything like that.
So for about a month I was calling him twice a week with:
"Can I get that quote"
"Can you confirm you can start on Aug 10th"
and would never get a call back.
My wife is much better at dealing with contractors then I am, we do the good cop, bad cop routine
She goes ape shit on them and then I play the nice guy afterward, it's served us well this far and did again this time as LaRue FINALLY called me back.
He wanted to set up a meeting to go over everything but I was going to be in Pittsburgh so he was going to meet with just my wife.
And that DID NOT go well. My wife isn't a hardcore feminist or anything but she is sensitive to sexism.
So when when LaRue showed up and the first thing he had to say to my wife was:
"Where is your husband" she knew it was not going to be a good conversation.
Things went downhill from their fast, LaRue continued to be cagey and even went as far as starting to talk down to my wife and almost become aggressive according to her, she put a stop to it right quick, but needless to say the company we had been planning to use for the excavation, we were not using, so we were back to square one....again.
I don't fault my wife even a bit, if this guy was that much of a douche I wouldn't want to use him anyway and I'll take my Wife's word over his every single day of the week.
So thus began the scramble to find a new company and the usual run around I'm sure we are all familiar with when trying to deal with contractors.
I think we called 10 - 15 different excavation companies and got the usual run around from, "We're too busy" or just not even calling us back.
We did have a few come on site, and one that did came back saying he couldn't do it and the price tag was going to be 25K anyway.
That was quite a bit of sticker shock for us, we figured 10K for the excavation almost triple what we had thought it was going to be. So there was a moment where I was almost ready to cut our losses and call it a day 25K to move some dirt around seemed ridiculous!
But it appears he wasn't far off. We got some more quotes and things are right in line with what that guy was saying.
So my wife being the awesome person she is decided we are just going to have to deal with it, I was almost ready to say were done, but she wouldn't let me. So we are in the processes of rejigging things mortgage wise and were back on track!
So finally today I'm happy to say we found our company:
http://hardingexcavation.ca/
Local guy, really knowledgeable and not a sexist Douche. He came to us with the most detailed quote, I think I had 5 or 6 people in for a site visit and he was the only one to go as far as to do test digs and soil samples so he knew exactly what he was getting into before he promised he could do anything.
He came back to us with a 19K price tag, taxes and everything as the absolute highest the project would go.
We sign the contract on Monday and ideally if Zig from Viking can work it out, we break ground Tuesday!
