Tenders etc

So, what's been going on since my last post? As usual a lot of waiting on the architect!
During the summer they were working on the tender document to send out to builders and my, did it take some time. I know that their job is to get as much information in the document as possible in order for the quotes to be accurate but everything seemed to be incredibly slow.

Apparently it's standard for builders to need 4 weeks to get together their prices so the tenders were sent out to 4 builders and Will & I contacted 3 independently. After a couple of weeks one of the building companies (Hare Builders) requested an extra week - and we stupidly said "OK" so it went on an extra week. The prices were amazingly varied with the highest being Hare, £200k above the bottom two!!
 
During the process we contacted and met with 2 of the architect's builders and one who we contacted directly. For us, we knew that we needed to be able to get on with the contractor and hopefully get a good working relationship going with them, as we had realised by this point, that we would want deal directly with the builder during the build foreseeing problems if we kept the architect in control.

We made our decision on price, of course, but also on personality. It came down to two companies in the end and we chose the company who appear happy to deal direct with us, listen to us and work together with us. They are a very small company but really keen to build something a bit interesting and high spec and concentrate solely on our project. They've quoted a 32 week build which takes us to May next year.... if we're in then we will be SO chuffed!!