Comment by sowbug

Just for you, I went back and checked the numbers.

$33K list price 4K delivery 3K sales tax 8.5K onsite assembly 1K building application and permit

So that's $49.5K for what in my mind was a $30K prefab office.

Then a basic wood frame foundation for a couple grand, torn down when the county changed its mind about the foundation type (but I did end up using most of the wood for other projects), a $4,500 site plan demanded by the county now that their concrete foundation made the project look more like a permanent fixture on the property, additional permits for the foundation, changes to the site plan when we discovered the existing foundation under the backyard pavers, and then building the foundation and the framing atop it, which all in totaled $70,485 -- not the $80K I remembered.

So I started with "Ooh, an extra room for about $30K?! Let's do it!" to "Ugh, it's actually going to be $49K with all the tax and delivery and permits," to "Aaargh, $20K more because of errors or crazy shit that they could have told me from the start." Yeah, maybe the contractor used the foundation change orders to sneak in an extra $2K-$3K, but I'm not a GC and by that point I wasn't going to bid it out.

But, as I said, I love the office and use it daily, so I can't say I regret it.