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Do-It-Yourself Renovation — What you need to know
There is no reason that you can't do your own renovation. Getting a great looking job is just a matter of proper planning and attention to detail. If you follow the right steps you too can get the spectacular results that you see on television. Here is what you need to do.
Planning
Every great project begins with a detailed plan. In renovation the plan is first of all to determine what the work is to be and the order in which you should do it.
Figuring out the work can be the biggest puzzle of all. You need to decide where to start and where to stop. The worst thing that can happen is that by making one change - say flooring for example - you make the rest of the room look tired.
Generally speaking you want to define an entire space as being the area that you want to renovate. This can be simple if you are looking at one bathroom. It can be complicated if you want to renovate a kitchen open to a family room. Making the decision of where to stop will govern the whole project and determine to a considerable degree how happy you are about the money you have spent.
Another element of figuring out the work is determining what trades need to be involved. For example, if you want to modernize the look of your home with current colors and finishes, should you replace those old ivory electrical plugs? If you do, is there other electrical work that will need to be done? Similarly, if you are taking out a wall, you may need a structural report but you may also need to consider rearranging heat ducts.
Planning the order of the work is an easier problem to solve. The governing principle is that no work should undo previous work. As one example, you wouldn't lay new flooring if you were going to have people walking over it in work boots to get other work done unless it was well protected. Normally finishes are the last part of the job to be done. Generally structural changes are the first construction work to be done after demolition.
A third element of planning is the selection of colors and materials. I recommend that all colors and materials be selected in advance and that delivery times be arranged prior to construction start. It can be time consuming and frustrating to discover that when you want to start tile work, the tile is no longer available and you must either select from available samples or wait for six weeks for a suitable replacement.
The last critical element of planning is figuring out what to do with your stuff and with your family while this is going on.
Pricing
This is a simple matter. Use the same principle that a developer would use to build a high rise and your price will come out as well as it can. That principle is: define the work clearly and get more than one bid. Three is typically the right number. Bear in mind that this should be done only for the major work and not for minor details. You will never get a budget to conform to actual cost. Budgeting is a process rather than a fixed event.
As an individual doing one project, you won't benefit from discounted contractor prices for the simple reason that contractors supply repeat business to their trades and suppliers and you won't. Similarly, you won't get the trades to adhere to a tight construction schedule because they have other demands on their time from their regular clients. If the construction industry is busy, it can be very difficult for some trades to respond in any kind of a timely way. This is just one of the limitations from the point of view of your work. Nonetheless, it can be done with patience and most of all prompt payment.
Every tradesman knows that he may have to wait to get paid 30 to 45 days after the work is complete. On some occasions they know that they won't get paid at all because of bankruptcy of the builder or developer. Suppliers solve this problem by demanding cash on delivery from homeowners.
You can be a great friend of the trades by paying promptly on completion of their work. This will ensure that it gets done in a timely manner. The trades will tell each other whether and how they got paid. A good payment record goes a long way with the trades. On the other hand, paying in advance is a serious mistake. It frequently means that the work never gets done. The exception to this rule is when the contractor is licensed, bonded and insured in Alberta. This means that your deposits are guaranteed by a bond and are therefore not at risk.
Permitting
There is a great temptation to get work done without a building or other permits with the goal of saving a little money. This would be a very serious mistake. The rules for sale of real estate in Alberta have changed to now require that the seller of a home must declare whether work done on the home was permitted under municipal bylaws. This creates potential liability for homeowners where permits were not properly taken out and higher cost if they have to be applied for after the fact. Further, electrical, and plumbing permits, for example, are required to ensure health and safety and no home is deemed safe unless those permits were properly approved and inspected. Planning departments are very helpful in describing the steps necessary to getting to a properly permitted and inspected job. This step is not optional.
Scheduling
This can be frustrating for owners. It is particularly difficult for owners living in the midst of a renovation because trades schedule the work to fit their schedule and that may not fit with yours. Further, if one trade misses his schedule by a day, you may lose a week in construction simply because everyone in line behind the trade in question has to readjust their schedule as well.
This is a reality in the business and much of the progress of any construction job depends on how well you can time-manage your construction team. Here, the biggest organizations have the least problems. If you are building a $200M building, all trades on the project makes it their absolute priority to be where they are told to be and when they are told to be there.
Timing during a smaller renovation project won't work as well. The best that you can do here is make time a component of the quote. That is, ask how long it will take when you ask how much it will cost. Then make yourself a cumulative chart of the times expected and adjust it upwards for 25% lost time. Making that your completion target will substantially reduce the frustration level.
During the course of construction, staying on or near your targeted time budget will be a matter of holding the trades to their time commitments and advising following trades of schedule changes promptly.
Construction
Construction is a dirty, messy business. Controlling the mess is first of all a matter of having a place to put the debris. A large garbage bin will satisfy the needs of most projects but you may need a series of them for a large project. It is a good idea to clean up on a daily basis if you are living in the home while under construction. This doesn't need to be too much effort. The worst of it will occur during demolition. The other dirty part of construction is drywall and taping. It mostly involves dust so it is important to change furnace filters regularly and clean out the ducts when the work is done.
Completion
This is the toughest part of the job and the part that most often gets short shrift. A builder once told me that what matters in construction is the last 2%. That percentage is the finish that you put on the job. This is where an eye for detail counts. What I mean by that is that you must look at the work and compare it to how you visualized it.
It can be difficult because your eye may accept things that are not right. For example, some cabinets are delivered without finished toe kicks with the expectation that they will be finished on site. It would be up to you to ensure that they are. But unless you get down and look...
Finishing is also the work that many of us feel we can do ourselves.
Some believe that they are qualified painters based on the experience they had in their first apartment. Painting is a very demanding trade which involves not only a fine eye for detail and a steady hand but also a fair knowledge of chemistry. Good workmanship in the finish is what everyone sees and values. It is not the place to try to save money.
Finally, when you look around at what you have accomplished, you should feel proud of what you see. If you don't, figure out why and make it right.
At the end of the day, your work should make you feel good about your investment, your work and yourself.