Chris vs The Builder, Round Three

When you are building a house, especially a custom house, you run into a lot of things where you end up paying extra money. We knew this, having been around the block a few times. We budgeted for this. We knew what things were important to us and what would be 'nice' but not necessary. Our budget is not small, but it also was not a stretch for us. It is what we decided on and we were sticking to it. Then, last week, we got a bill from the builder. It was the kind of bill that they e-mail late on a Friday night to our work computers. The kind of bill where the first thing I did was to call Chris and make sure he had taken his blood pressure medicine that day.
Now, before I tell you more about the bill, let me lay a little background. My husband owns a company that does site work. Things like earth work, underground utilities and paving. He has been in this business for some 20 years or so, and is pretty knowledgable about such things. Before we broke ground on our house, he offered some suggestions to the builder that were intended to save them some money. One thing he told them was that the clay in the ground under our property was of an excellent grade and they could dig it up and use it for the pad of the house. They ended up doing that and it probably saved them several thousand dollars, plus we got a higher grade of clay than what they could buy.

to be continued...