I know this is kind of off topic, but I am completely stressed out right now and just need to vent a little.

We're in the beginning of putting an addition onto our house. My FIL is loaning us the money to do the addition and we're paying him back/selling the house. We have a strict budget to keep to get everything that we want in the addition.

I just found out from the guy putting in our foundation that the building inspector wants him to spread gravel. He said it's going to be an extra $1200 now and if I could have the check ready in about 45 minutes, that would be great.

My FIL is the home-builder and probably won't like finding out that the foundation went $1200 over budget without us consulting him. I tried calling him, and he's not answering his phone. I don't want to write the check for the gravel if it's not absolutely necessary. Basically, I'm not comfortable making the decision to just willy-nilly spend $1200 on gravel.

I know in the grand scheme of things, $1200 might not seem like a lot, but that is enough money to pay for the entire (small) master bath -- shower, vanity, toilet, flooring, lighting, etc. We may have to hack a bathroom out of our plans to make up for the gravel, which means I'll have to go through the permit process again with the revised floor plan and the house will only have 1 bathroom.

Oh and the best part is that if I go ahead and buy this $1200 worth of gravel, it's going to be my fault if that's a high price and it's going to be my fault if we shouldn't have bought it. I hate being in this position. This is our second surprise expense and the first one didn't go over too well either (we had to hire a plumber to move our propane tanks because they were too close to the hole for the foundation and they could have fallen in it... $300 later and we're going to have to pay to move them AGAIN once the project is over).

Is it possible to tell them that you don't have the authority to approve over budget items and that you need to acquire approval from the "financier" before you can hand them a check? I'm always leery when someone tries to tell me a project suddenly will cost more than the agreed upon price. Good luck!!