Common Remodel Mistakes

Hindsight is 20/20! Avoid making these common remodel mistakes - your sanity will thank us.

• Not creating the “Big Picture”/ Long-term Design

  • Before starting work on any specific room, it is important to take a wholistic look at the house and determine what your goals are. Often, a remodel will expand throughout the house and creating a “big picture” plan from the get-go will help address all areas of the work and create a cohesive design.

  • Making small, yet impactful, updates in multiple rooms will help offset incongruities or disjointedness and help blend the remodel.

• Not accounting for existing structural integrity/ Issues

  • When planning for a remodel, do not account for just the “facade” or the surface finishes. Be sure to take existing posts, columns, shear walls, etc into account. Removing a wall to “open” the room? Make sure to check the direction of the ceiling/floor joists above and verify if those joists are resting on the wall you are planning to delete.

  • In most counties, there are two primary types of building permits: Full Plan Review vs Over-the-Counter. The latter is a much speedier route and will have fewer requirements for your remodel, but you will be limited in the amount of structural alterations you are able to perform. If you are looking for a quicker project schedule, you may want to plan your remodel around these lesser, Over-the-Counter, requirements.

• Selecting a Contractor (for residential work) based off the “Low Bid”

  • It is almost always a good decision to interview multiple contractors before making your selection. However, these interviews and your selection should be based off of trust, experience, relationships, and applicability to your project.

  • While you may get multiple initial estimates from different contractors that can range 20%+ of each other, it is important to keep in mind that these initial estimates are very rough and should not be the primary reason for selecting a contractor. It is much more important to select a contractor fitted to the work who you has proven experience in the field.

• Not planning for a contingency in both budget and schedule

  • No matter the project, you should have a contingency in your budget and schedule - never build to your maximum. Whether the project goes over budget due to change orders or you make changes to the design along the way that increase the cost, you will be happy knowing there is a contingency to work with. We recommend keeping this number to yourself, rather than building it into the construction estimate!