Construction Tips

Nine Ways to Make a Renovation Go More Smoothly.

Be clear about your project priorities early on in the process. A lot of time and money can be spent to have numerous schemes being explored.

Have a great team in place and make sure that they all get along and respect each other. Architect, Interior Designer, and Builder. Check references.

Concept, concept, concept. If you have a clear concept, the design takes less time. Your design team should present concept ideas on which every decision can be based.  Another way to think about “concept” is to consider it the project mission statement or an underlying principal. For example, with our “mountain house” project, the concept was “rustic contemporary”. Once we had that concept in mind, all other decisions flowed from those two words.

Construction : Steve Larsen
Photography : Brian Vanden Brink

Make sure you have a furniture plan. Work with your design team to do a furniture plan for the spaces to be renovated. That doesn’t mean that you have to buy all the furniture, but you want to make sure that your design team knows how you hope to use the space long term.

Have a complete set of plans and specifications prior to putting a job out to bid. The more decisions that are made prior to bidding, the closer the bids should be. Anything left to the contractors’ imagination will be subject to an estimate on their part and a possible change order for the clients.

Meet often, sometimes even once a week with the whole team, even if it doesn’t seem like there is anything to discuss. This will avoid the 6 p.m. emails from the contractor saying they need a decision on something by the next morning or the job will be delayed.

Don’t micromanage the project. If you have hired the right team, they know what they are talking about. Be clear about your expectations, but then let the experts carry out the plans.

Make sure that you set aside enough money for extras, there are always extras. You want to make sure that the project does not get stopped in the middle because of finances.

Know that there will be problems, there are always problems. A good team with deal with them directly without blaming each other. The sign of a good design team is how they deal with the problems not that there aren’t any problems.

You might want to print this list out and post it on your refrigerator as you are contemplating a project.

Advertisement