CONSTRUCTION SHOULD NOT SCARE YOU: JUST START

CONSTRUCTION SHOULD NOT SCARE YOU. JUST START.

After advertising semi-permanent house upgrade construction, through our affordable housing project, a client reached us to construct one for her mother.

Her mum was living in an old house done 32 years ago. She really wanted to change her mum's life and improve her dwelling.

Despite being outside Kenya, her budget was not adding up yet. She approached us and requested for a spacious two bedroom semi permanent house, blended with concrete finish. Her budget was Ksh. 500,000.

When we started planning and budget estimates, we felt two Bedroom would be too small for the mum. We asked her adjust to 600k so that we could do a three bedroom instead. She agreed and adjusted to 600k.

The house was to have a sitting room, kitchen, common washrooms and three bedrooms.

We had two months to organize and begin the construction

A month to the construction, she again reached out and said she has changed her mind, she asked if she could adjust to 1 million so that we do a permanent house, using bricks, 🧱 instead of stones. For a simple two Bedroom, we asked her to adjust to 1.2m. she agreed, but requested that we work with phases to enable her raise the funds in bits.

We visited the site with the architect to start art works. Then we realized the mum won't be comfortable in two bedroom, we reached the client once more to see if we can adjust to a three bedroom. She agreed again of course 🤣🤣, not sure whether there was money or the enthusiasm to finally put mum to a much better house.

We did the architectural designs, and finally started off. When we started, again the mum requested a little increase in size. By the time we were starting the work, we were constructing something extremely different from initial discussion.

We scheduled the house to be ready in 120 days. The impending problem was the finances. We were psychologically prepared for some push and pull, because it was true we had strained the client.

We did foundation, walling, windows, blandering, and then piping. Then financial nightmares started at the roofing stage. The budgets were getting bad, finishing was getting a nightmare, plaster works, tiles, ceiling, electrification. Things started getting tough.

She started getting frustrated.

We kept our war on paper, so the mum didn't know, she was ever happy everytime seeing us on site. We wanted to be part of deliverying a dream house to her.

We quarrelled, argued, recalculated, almost gave up, but no. We maintained our pressure to enable her work hard and bring funds, finally we delivered.

A beautiful 94 - iron sheets (all 3 meters) three bedroom house, big, spacious, kitchen, front & back porches, master bedroom, big lounge and dining. We allowed the family to selected preferred colours. The only thing we had to try scale down was roofing. We had to cut on many things during roofing to keep us moving.

We delivered. The mum is so happy. Just enough for her. Final project 2.4million