Will try to keep this short but include all info. So we have instructed builders to start work on our house in a few weeks time. We originally got a few different quotes and went with a company who weren't the cheapest but not the most expensive, we liked the main guy who seemed very professional and on top of things etc. He did some work on a friend's house too and they spoke highly of him and the team.
We have now had our lead builder round for a pre-start visit and it is becoming apparent that a lot of the quoted costs are going to creep up. Basically, it seems like they have not looked properly at the ins and outs of each thing we are asking them to do and so the quote is not actually 100% accurate. This is starting to explain why another company were coming out a fair bit more expensive, because when I look back on their quote they have itemised each and every stage of what would need doing in each room, whereas this company have given generic costings that don't actually seem to be specific to what we have asked them to do.
It's hard to explain but I will give an example. We told them that we wanted to knock down the wall between the toilet and bathroom, have a new suite, half tiled, new flooring, basically re-doing the entire bathroom. They came back with a quote of £6k, and I could see this broken down to some extent in the spreadsheet (lines for electric work, supply and fit of sanitary ware, tiling etc). But it now seems like they haven't actually allowed for all the various sub-components of the job e.g. they quoted for removing all the existing tiles on the wall, and then it says half tile, but they then said that often when you take tiles off the wall isn't in good enough condition to put new tiles straight on so it may need replastering. I appreciate that no-one has x-ray vision and can't see what condition the walls are in underneath the tiles, but we had specifically asked for a half tile in the bathroom to keep costs down (i.e. only tiling around bath/shower/sink, the rest will be painted) and the bathroom is currently fully tiled. Therefore even if the walls are in good condition, surely the walls would need to be replastered in areas where we are going to be painting as you can't just paint onto walls that have had tiles stuck on them, it will be all uneven. So then the cost of plastering would be on top of the quoted amount, even though it seems like a pretty obvious thing that is needed (even to me and I'm not a builder). The same basically applies in every area of the house - they did break down several elements of the job but how am I supposed to know all of the components required? surely that is their responsibility?
So for example they have quoted £1200 for 'supply and fit of new engineered wood flooring in hallway'. This is what we asked for, I'm not a flooring specialist so I take that at face value i.e. I assume that I will pay them £1200 and in return I expect to have a nice new floor at the end of it. Builder then mentions today that our floor doesn't look level and that engineered wood flooring needs the floor to be exactly level to fit onto (which I now know to be true). But the quoted cost doesn't include the cost of levelling, so that would be extra. Why not? The guys came round to my house and looked around, so they could see the floor isn't level. I didn't ask them to give me a generic price for how much flooring costs, I asked them to give me a quote for how much it would cost to supply and fit new flooring in MY specific hallway.
I can see the costs spiralling out of control, mainly because the quote we have been given doesn't cover all aspects of the work we have asked for. What should we do now? We have already paid a 5% deposit so it feels too late to back out, but at the same time I'm not prepared for the costs to just keep going up and up all because the guy didn't take his time going round and looking at everything properly to give us an accurate quote.