How long should this take?

Hi, just a quick question, we have had an 8m by 3m extension built out the back of our house, and our garage converted into a bedroom and bathroom. On average how many working hours should this take? I know this is extremely vague, but we were quoted as 320hours for skilled labourer and 320hours for unskilled. This has disappeared long ago, and we’re way over this.Our builder has also called our initial quote both a quote and an estimate so I don’t know where we stand on our final bill. Edit: We’ve had four men on site daily, rather than the initial two we were told, and it’s now been three and a half months and we’re still not finished. We did get three different quotes from local builders and they all ranged around the same, we actually went for the middle quote as his work had the best reviews. The build doesn’t include any of the electrical work or plumbing as we’re paying for that separately.

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Answer:

First off, those initial hour estimates of 320 for skilled and 320 for unskilled labor seem really low for an extension that size plus a garage conversion. Even with just 2 workers on site, you’d expect it to take more than those quoted hours.

But then having 4 guys there every day instead of 2 like you were told – that would make the hours rack up super fast. At that pace, blowing past the 640 hour estimate in just 3.5 months seems totally reasonable.

The builder quoting you one thing as an “estimate” but then calling it a fixed “quote” is shady practice. Those two things aren’t the same thing at all. A quote should be the agreed upon fixed price for the defined scope of work.

Since you did your due diligence and got multiple quotes that were all in the same ballpark, it doesn’t seem like you were lowballed intentionally. More likely the initial estimate was just way off base.

At this point, I’d review very clearly what was specified in the quote/contract, get a breakdown of the hours clocked so far, and have an open convo with the builder about what it will take to properly complete the remaining work. With things dragging on this long already, you’ve gotta get on the same page costs and timeline-wise to avoid any more headaches!