Design Construction has been in business since 1984, as licensed general contractors; they specialize in your construction need A to Z - Plumbing, Electrical, flooring, window replacements are some of the services we offer. Contact us for your free estimate.
Design Construction provides San Fernando Valley, Glendale, LaCrescenta, Calabasas, Moorpark, Simi Valley, and Santa Clarita an affordable and timely solution to home improvement and remodeling. There is no replacement for skill and experience. When you hire them, they work for you. Saving you time and money is their mission. They carefully select quality supplies and keep project costs within your budget. They work with interior or exterior remodeling projects. Whether you are looking for kitchen remodeling, flooring, or a room addition, their contractors can answer all you questions and concerns. Your satisfaction is their priority.
Are We Built Yet? Avoid the 10 mistakes that slow down construction
Plan, design, build - that’s the order of the activities that lead to the successful and timely completion of any construction project. Yet every day homeowners choose to start construction before they’ve done their planning and design work, and they’re surprised and frustrated at how long it takes to finish the job.
When homeowners jump start the project, they take the risk that the contractor will imagine something different that the owner is imagining and the finished product won’t meet the owner’s expectations. Everybody gets angry, and the dispute can end up in court. The only satisfaction the owner gets from all this is to be able to tell his friends that old, woeful tale entitled “What My Contractor Did to Me.”
In the construction business, time really is money, The contractor really wants exactly what you want: to get it right the first time. That’s the only way he can make a profit, get a good reference, and grow his business. once you understand this, you’ll understand why it is most often the home owner’s responsibility, not the contractor’s, if the job gets delayed.
HERE ARE TEN EXAMPLES OF SOME COMMON MISTAKES THAT INEXPERIENCED OWNERS MAKE:
1. Not thinking the project through - Begin your project by making a list of things you don’t like about your home. Include everything from shape of your kitchen windows to the slope of your yard — anything that bugs you. Without this list, your project won’t solve your problems; all it will do is pretty-up the problems you’ve already got. And if your design is incomplete when you start, you’ll have to stop the work to incorporate additional work — causing delays that wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d planned more carefully.
2. Designing the project without help - Take your list and a file-full of magazine pictures you like to a professional designer and ask him or her to help you clearly define the entire job. They know how to create a polished space that harmonizes with the rest of your home and that will maximize the increase in equity value that results from your investment. Amateur design can actually de-value your property. A professional designer will also provide you with a detailed set of drawings that tell the contractor exactly what he has to do to satisfy you and get paid on time. The contractor’s price will go down and his work will be finished faster if he feels confident that he knows all the details before he picks up his hammer.
3. Hiring a contractor without referrals from others in the industry - Where do you look for a good contractor? Call professionals that review work done by many different contractors on a regular basis. Lenders or their construction inspectors are probably the best resource for referrals. Real estate agents, appraisers, building inspectors, and designers can also be helpful. Briefly describe your project to any of these professionals and ask them for a list of three or four builders whose work consistently impresses them. When you’ve got several lists, you’ll notice that some names appear on more than one. These are your best candidates.
4. Not understanding what motivates a good contractor - Most building contractors work on a scant 5 percent net profit margin. The cost of materials represent only 20 percent of all costs, and he can know ahead of time what those cost will be. But labor cost represent the remaining 75 percent and these cost can very unexpectedly; he can’t always control them. Every minute that there is a worker standing around waiting for instructions, you general contractor is paying that person a salary without getting any work done. This cost comes directly out of his pocket.
5. Wasting the contractor’s time (and your money!) - Respect your builder’s need to focus on his work. Don’t chat, don’t change your mind, don’t re-direct his subs, and don’t do anything that slows him down.
6. Telling the contractor how to do his work - If you have hired an experienced professional builder, he knows what needs to be done. it is entirely his responsibility to run the site. When you ask the painter to stop work in the kitchen while you cook supper, you’ve messed with the general contractor’s schedule and when your cabinets arrive, the kitchen may not be ready.
7. Chit-chating with the subcontractors - Remodeling is team sport. The general contractor is the captain of his team, which includes the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, and all the other workers. You are the captain of your team, which includes your designer, your spouse and other family members, your nosy neighbor, and anyone else who visits the site at your invitation during the work period. Team captains should be the only two people who talk to each other. By limiting all communications to conversations between just the two of you, you will guarantee that instructions never get muddied in translation, and that the subcontractors all know they have only one boss. If you don’t respect this cardinal rule of site politics, your workers may pack up their tools and tell you that when you’ve sorted out who is in charge, you can call them and they’ll get back to work as soon as they finish the next project.
8. Listening to uniformed opinions from friends and family - When it comes to monitoring construction in progress, most people haven’t a clue what they’re looking at. If you have hired an experienced professional builder, you can talk to him about any concerns you may have, and he’ll give you all the information you need to understand the problem and make a good decision. Your second choice ought to be to call in the designer to help you work out something you can’t manage yourself. But if your nosy neighbor tells you that the contractor is doing something wrong, don’t take that advice at face value; ask the experts. If there is a problem, it’s the experts (not the neighbor) who will help you sort it out. If there is no problem, work can continue without delay.
9. Reacting out of fear instead of asking questions - Construction is a high-anxiety process. It’s easy to imagine how some folks might react with hair-trigger speed to anything that even remotely sound like bad news. If you discover something that concerns you, try to hold your fears in check until you’ve got all the facts. Treat your construction problem as you would treat any other kind of problem. Find out what is really going on and work with the right people to correct it. If the builder feels he can’t trust you to keep a level head (or vice versa), everybody gets paranoid, communications break down and the disputes begin. Resolving disputes takes time away from the production schedule.
10. Mind-changing - All of your decisions should be made with the designer and incorporated in the construction drawings before your contractor pulls into your driveway. All of them: from how high the top shelf cabinets can be, to the style of the French doors, to the slope of the roof, to the color of the bathroom tiles. If you design as you go, the contractor will forever be waiting for you to choose a refrigerator so he’ll know which size cabinets he can order, to run to Lowe’s to pick out a storm door so that he knows where to cut the frame for the hinges and the latch. You can bet his proposal will be in the form of an hourly fee if he finds out that this is how you plan to run your job.
A FINAL NOTE ABOUT DESIGN/BUILD CONTRACTORS - Some builders, in order to defend themselves from both lost profits and lawsuits, now offer design services. The contractor knows what information he needs, what information the inspectors want to see, and what information will get him a permit on first application, and all of that will be in his drawings guaranteed. That’s the up-side. One-stop shopping is appealing because it limits the number of professionals you have to deal with. On the other hand, you must decide whether these advantages are worth giving up the independent professional opinion of the designer if you and your contractor should have a misunderstanding. By: Susan Solakian - New Homes and Ideas Fall 2005.
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