We recently had some building work carried out at our house which involved builders, plumbers, electricians etc. being on site for a considerable amount of time.We have a fire in our living room which has never been quite right and we were keen to have a wood burning stove installed.
Over the years we have had several people come to look at the fire place and everyone has said "oh no you can't fit a stove in there and you can't have one". We really wanted one as we have had a stove in various holiday cottages we have been in and we really like the idea of something controllable that we could sit in front of with the dog and watch the telly.
As the years went on, I put a higher and higher value on having something like this in my living room, I know it sounds stupid but sitting infront of a log burning fire with my little boy, watching Star Wars would be a priceless memory.
When we finally had the building work done recently I got one of the brick layers and asked him if it would be possible to change the fireplace to have a wood burning stove. The builder said "of course you can, you can change anything in any way you want, you just have to be prepared to pay the price it costs"
In the end we have a discussion with the group of builders, they were quite happy to do this and the price was much lower than I thought it would be.
Before that, everyone had assumed that I would not be prepared to pay what it cost to get the thing that I wanted and they had no idea what value I had put on having the wood burner.
I am very conscious of the fact that we do this all the time in dentistry and instead if offering patients the options to solve the problem they have, we make an assumption that they wouldn’t be prepared to pay for the solution.
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