Hey! We’ve seen a lot of client work in our 20yrs of business. A lot of good work and a lot of well…….not so good kitchen remodeling work. We wanted to put together a list of the most common mistakes we’ve seen our clients and customers make when looking to do a kitchen remodeling project. I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories, unfortunately, bad kitchen remodels are pretty frequent. Often times we visualize the end result of our fantasy kitchen. How it actually turns out doesn’t always match up. Anyway, let’s get to it…
- Attempting to be your own general contractor. – I’ll be straight forward here. Unless you really know what you’re doing, leave it to the professionals. What many people don’t realize is that a kitchen remodeling project is one of the most difficult and complex projects you can take on. Getting feedback from licensed professional contractors is not only high valuable but in many states throughout the country necessary by law.
- Hiring an unlicensed general contractor because they’re the cheapest. Never hire an unlicensed contractor, ill repeat it again, never hire an unlicensed general contractor. They’re cheap and unlicensed because of a reason. You’ll be kicking yourself down the road when issues and problems come up and the contractor is nowhere to be found.
- Putting together a job for contractors to bid out without enough specifications – The typical reason why remodeling jobs go over budget is either because the individual who put the job details together didn’t give enough specification. Be is detailed as possible. I’m talking down to the nitty gritty. Everything from the specific type of flooring the exact marble countertop, brand of recessed lights and even hardware for the cabinets if you know it already. This will drastically increase your changes of getting the most accurate bid upfront and not getting into issues and challenges with pricing and going over budget half way into the project.
- Payment in advance – You wouldn’t believe how many people are willing to fork over thousands of dollars and nearly half of life savings to a near complete stranger. As a general rule of thumb, never but a deposit down or pay upfront more than 25% of the project cost.
- Create an absolute must have list and stick to it – Ever heard of shiny object syndrome? It’s where the next best shiny things comes along and you feel compelled to buy it because you’ve been convinced the the latest and greatest. Don’t deviate from your compiled wishlist. If you do, you will run into budget and time constraints and often your project will be completed late.
And there you have it folks. The 5 most common mistakes people make with planning and executing a kitchen remodel project. We’ll keep you posted on more tips like these in the near future!
-Julian-