Don’t Trust Off-the-cuff Quotes On Your Home Renovation
by Elton Donald, Senior Project Consultant
If you go on your site and some guy meets you one time, measures two things, and goes away and then issues you a quotation for construction, I find that to be hard to want to emulate and follow that process.
For me, it would not even hit the development of the idea, the understanding behind what do we have to do to achieve this such as what level am I trying to achieve? What kinds of things are driving those?
Because that’s going to be what dictates the cost, you know. Taste, level of finish and then from a technical standpoint, what’s the condition of the home’s structure. Are we interrupting load paths? Or are we altering the building envelope in such a manner that we need to create a design that keeps it watertight?
So for someone to throw a tape out, go away and write a bunch of stuff up doesn’t cover it.
What I would say to my clients that are asking me to do something along those lines is be really careful about understanding just how many out-clauses would be in that person’s proposal. You know, should we find this, it’s extra. Should that happen, it’s extra. Should this become, it’s extra.
And then you start to say, well, what are you really quoting?
The way we want to do it is before we get going, we want to create a mutual understanding of what we’re doing. We want you, the client, to have a complete understanding to the best of our ability, what the costs would be to hit that, that thing, that idea. Then we can start to bring in the accuracy.
Construction is a tough gig, right? So I would rather concentrate on why I believe this is the best way to do it rather than put someone else down.
I love to answer people’s questions and get them on the right road to a good home renovation experience whether you use us or not. Don’t hesitate to give me a call at the office. No obligation.