BUDGETING: CAN YOU REALLY AFFORD THE WORK?

So one of the things I hear a lot from people are that they’re budgeting for a remodel project. There’s some people who are great at this, and some who have more of a challenge. But whether you’re hiring a Contractor to do some work for you, or you plan on saving money by tackling the project on your own, budgeting will be the hingepoint of success, because exceeding your budget can result in unnecessary and difficult delays, not to mention placing an unexpected financial hardship that could leave one with a woefully bitter taste by the end of the project. So how can we budget effectively? Always plan for the worst.

Unfortunately, this is something rarely understood until experienced firsthand. As a Homeowner performing work on your own, you can plan everything to achieve that remodel down to the nearest penny, but when you’re hit with the unexpected, you know there’s nothing you could have done before to predict it, and nothing you can do now but to address it, or cut the corner. Believe me when I say cutting the corner is attractive to your pocketbook, but the long-term damage will prove much, much more costly.

Think about going to a doctor’s office, knowing you had a cough and were tired all the time, expecting to receive your diagnosis and pay for some treatment for the common cold. Queue your meeting, where you discover you have a pneumonia, and it’s something nobody could have known or guessed at before, but you still need to deal with it. It’s the same thing for contract work. What began as simple remodeling and drywall could easily turn into a moderate-sized plumbing or electrical job alongside your remodel or, as I would never wish this on an enemy, a foundation problem becomes apparent. Your home is sick, and fixing it becomes a necessity!

So what sort of things go wrong during remodels? Well, the first remodel job Sapphire ran we learned real quick about things that go wrong- nothing in this bathroom was straight, level, or plumb. Nothing. Wood rot can be found, mold can be uncovered, lead paint or asbestos can become issues. Simple code compliance faults, foundation concerns, a thousand things can go wrong and thousand others can go right. Where’s the medium?

First, find the right contractor. Find the guys who will educate you, and tell you about issues as they exist. I’ve done inspections on homes where Kitchens have had these BEAUTIFUL, just…GORGEOUS remodels and discovered the foundation settled over 6”. The contractor had just shaved everything to LOOK level on a foundation that was not. So if the client wanted to fix their foundation by leveling it, they would essentially destroy this beautiful piece of work that their Kitchen just became. This is all due to a contractor who didn’t want to lose his remodeling contract, so the information simply wasn’t shared. Find the right contractor who will address the problems the right way.

Next, I call it my 30% rule. If you’re really being conscientious about your budgeting, and you receive several bids and even guesstimate the middle-range of your estimates for budget purposes, still then, add 30%. In this industry, the cheapest deal is often not the best deal. So if you want to REALLY project plan, then take a contractor’s estimate, or your own numbers-crunching, and add 30% to it (minimum) for things that may go awry. In a perfect world, the project goes without a hitch and you’ve got some spending money at the end. In a not-so-perfect world, you’ve still adequately planned on spending the money anyway. Worst case scenario, your friendly, reputable contractor can pull the plug BEFORE adding thousands of dollars of costs to you.

Home repair and renovation should be an exciting experience through a sometimes very scary time. The 30% rule is a good start (especially for those of you doing the work yourselves!), but finding the right Contractor is paramount to your experience. These two items are a crucial element to maintaining your happy, healthy home.