Home, Kitchen & Bathroom Remodeling Renovation and Improvement Process
The remodeling process is personalized to you (In the process below, this begins under Obtaining Bids & Designs). We begin with a visit to your home and produce a view of your project where you express the functionality you need. We take care of the design and engineering of all those aspects of the project you do not see. You remain involved in the visual aspects of the design and your dreams are accomplished in the functionality you need.
The Process
The following is the order of some of the elements of the process. If you wish to get started, go down the list in order. We will take you to various pages on the site. As you go to each page, you will see at the bottom of each section a "Return to Process" which will return you here so that you may complete the process step by step.
- Rough Definition of Your Project
- Rough Pricing
- Making an Initial List
- Rough Contractor Selection
- Obtaining Bids & Designs
- Final Contractor Selection
- Design Completion
Rough Definition
In Rough Definition, you will define the type of contractor to contract with. In order to define the type of contractor for your project, please proceed to Project Definition.
Rough Pricing
In order to obtain rough pricing of just the bathroom and kitchen portions of your project, please proceed to Rough Pricing
Initial List
Now it is time to make your initial list of contractors. You have determined the type of contractor or contractors that you need. If you are considering hiring a home remodeling contractor or hiring individual specialty contractors, it is time to make that decision now. Write down an initial list of at least 10 contractors for each type of contractor that you need. This list may come from family, friends, relatives, your favorite media, or the phone book. It makes no difference. You are going to check them out. As you go through Rough Contractor Selection, you may wonder why there is not an emphasis on references. If you wish to pursue this view, go to References and Warranties. You will be returned to this point to continue.
Rough Contractor Selection
In Rough Contractor Selection, you will use the basic and unique requirements that a contractor must have in order to work in your home to determine if they should be included to bid on your project. In order to accomplish rough contractor selection, please proceed to Rough Contractor Selection
Obtaining Bids and Designs
In order to obtain bids and designs for your project and select your contractor, please proceed to Bids and Designs
Final Contractor Selection
In Final Contractor Selection you will determine your contractor.
Design Completion
You should have selected your contractor. You may now continue your design process for your project. You and your contractor will work together to change the proposed design to exactly what you want. We hope it was us. If we bid on a job and do not get the job, please tell us why. We hope to learn how we could have improved your project design, or improve the interaction with our people. Thank You, and we wish you well on your project.
References and Warranties
References
We feel that when you check out a contractor, the most important things to know are whether they are working legally, and are they insured. This is even more important than competency issues. When you obtain references, particularly very good ones, they are generally in two categories. Either the contractor is very competent, or the contractor is dishonest. The problem is, that dishonest people lie. They produce great references, just like very competent people do. Dishonest people have friends, family, and associates which will generate references. The problem is, the homeowner doesn't know which case they are dealing with. More fundamental than that, references do not tell you whether the contractor is working legally and whether they are insured. Even very competent contractors sometimes work without proper licenses or insurance.
References are therefore unreliable. References are sort of like iceing. If you have good cake, iceing may be great, but with bad cake, good iceing is useless. Therefore, we consider references like iceing. Check out the contractors to the extent they are legal and insured, and then if you want, bring references in to assist in sorting them out. In our process, because of our experience, we first tend to sort the legal and insured contractors by their pricing, because we find that contractors that price extremely low tend to provide incompetent work. It would be valid to also consider references to assist sorting contractors by competency, but we tend not to give them too much emphasis because even very good contractors can have really great reviews or really bad reviews depending upon time and chance.
Warranties
A warranty from an honest contractor that bids enough overhead and profit to meet emergencies and stay in business is worth what the contractor states it to be. A warranty from a dishonest contractor is worth zip. A warranty from an honest contractor that fails to bid enough overhead and profit to stay in business or take care of emergencies is worth zip. So the question is, how do you as a homeowner know if the warranty offered in a contractor's proposal is of value? Do you appreciate the correlation between higher bids that have overhead and profit with real value in warranties, and lower bids without enough or no overhead and profit with no value in warranties? Consider that irrespective of warranties, a contractor must bid enough overhead and profit to take care of you and your project. You as a homeowner must understand that there is more to contractors costs than labor and material. If you want to select a contractor that can stand by his work you must select a contractor that did not present you with a bid that is too low. With that in mind, you see that reinforces our view expressed above in References that you must sort contractors by their bid price if you are going to protect your investment in your project.