Choosing contractors
We had an unusual approach to finding contractors to work on our house. Our architect is someone we'd talked to before at a sustainable fair. We'd talked about shipping containers as housing but Nathan had discovered that once you start ripping the sides out of shipping containers, they stop being so functional and start bending instead. Slightly sub-optimal for housing one might say. Still he's a good bloke and we had some interesting chats. Then it turns out the bloke down the street is a builder, aka general contractor as it is known in the US. Pretty handy. I looked around online and his rates seemed okay and his work looked good, and Nathan really wanted him to work on the place so that was done and dusted. We've been talking to one mob who do house lifts for about a year. They were interested, they are local, they have a good rep, what's not to like? Then we got the quote and just for the lift, excavations and footings/foundation work, it was uhh