Though an overwhelming and stressful experience, remodeling your home, whether it is one room or multiple rooms, is still and exciting adventure that brings benefits that make it all worth it. Improving daily life and increasing the resale value are just a few examples of the advantages. When it comes time to hammer out the details with your contractor and throughout your project, we at Future Vision Remodeling would like to offer a few tips to successfully communicate with your contractor to ensure a smooth remodeling period with a superior outcome.
How to Get the Most Out of Your General Contractor
1) Intended Use of Room: Take the time to describe how the room is intended to be used. Simple explanations of what you are looking for in a remodel can fog the details. Sharing with your contractor the intended use of the room or rooms can better help your contractor understand what you are looking for with your remodel. For clarification, do not be hesitant to let them know what the room will be used for. For instance, if you are a person with a family and love hosting activities with extended family and friends, when you tell them you need storage to accommodate your lifestyle, they know you may need more storage space as opposed to living alone and never hosting anything.
2) Importance of Clear Descriptions & Visual Aids. Write out descriptions and find visual aids. Writing out your goals, and even having pictures, images, and diagrams to help offer some visual aids goes along way than just your verbal articulation. If your contractor has a few references as to what your goals are, you can avoid a lot of misunderstandings and delays. Having several different pictures just to highlight one feature is equally acceptable. The contractor can weed out the visual aids that don’t help and focus on the ones that do.
3) Home Journal & Organizer of Remodeling Project. Keep a detailed journal of your remodeling project. Writing in your remodel project journal has several advantages. Keep an accurate record of what your contractor relates to you and accomplishes date. Note the progress with the corresponding dates. Your journal will also give you a designated place to jot down questions, concerns, ideas, and other information you want to discuss with your contractor. Delivery dates and other pertinent information can be easily kept in a localized book for easy reference.
4) Tell Your Contractor Your Budget. Let the contractor know your financial budget and be clear on what you can afford. Do not hesitate to be straight forward and realistic about your spending abilities with your contractor. Too often homeowners are hesitant to let the contractor know what they can afford and a s a result, they go way over budget. Labor and materials are included in the overall prices and it is important you let the contractor what the firm budget is before they even begin.
5) Quick Home Renovation Tips.
– Ask for a timeline starting with when the project begins until the project ends along with the important markers throughout the project.
– Never hesitate to communicate with your contractor at the beginning of each day about questions, concerns, ideas, or simply what they intend to accomplish by the end of the day.
– Be detailed with your request, the more you divulge only arms the contractor with what you want.
– Take the time to fully understand the rough estimate and make sure there is nothing misleading about the costs and other details.
Whole Home Remodeling & More in Redwood City, Foster City, Palo Alto, Saratoga, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Sunnyvale, Campbell, Loyola, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Santa Clara & Greater San Jose, California
When you are remodeling your San Jose, CA home, call Future Vision Remodeling for your consultation!
