When you choose to renovate your home, you are entering into a new adventure! Changing paint colours or changing out cabinets is not only a home improvement, but a lifestyle change you are going to make to better your life by enhancing your daily living experience and improving the value of your property. Whether you need to renovate an outdated kitchen, create a bathroom that feels like you stepped into a spa, or undergo a full remodel of your home’s footprint, completing your project requires skilled labour, partnering with the right people, and the right company that will carry out your ideas and advocate on your behalf from day one.
A good general contractor will be a partner to you and will ensure you are staying within budget, on time, and executing a quality build you expected. Hiring the right contractor is the single most important step to transforming your home into your dream home.
Vetting Potential Contractors
Finding the right experts to trust with your key home investment requires looking for specific, non-negotiable qualities. Take your time with this and know this “time spent now, will save you countless headaches and expenses down the line.”
- Experience and Proven Track Record: Seek a company that has spent significant time, actively working on similar projects to yours. Request a portfolio of completed projects, and closely inspect the quality of craftsmanship, consideration for detail, and variety of challenges successfully navigated. A deeply experienced firm can manage unanticipated issues that will arise during a major project and provide solutions without compromising the outcome.
- Proper Licensing and Insurance: This is critical to your protection. The contractor must possess all current licenses required by local officials in order to legally work in your area. Additionally, they must carry liability insurance, and workers’ compensation insurance to protect you, the homeowner, from any financial responsibility should an accident or injury occur on your property during the work.
- Communication Style and Reliability: A true expert in remodelling should be a good communicator. They should carefully listen to your ideas, quickly answer your questions, and provide regular updates about the project. Pay attention to how quickly they respond when you leave messages during the initial stages. Often, this is a strong indicator of how well they communicate when your job begins.
Checking References and Quality of Work
Once you narrow your list down to strong candidates, you can start looking past the sales pitch to evaluate their work and previous customer relationships. This is when you’ll get to see what it is really like to work with them.
- Speaking to Previous Clients: Make sure to ask to speak to a number of recent clients and follow up by calling. You want to ascertain their overall experience regarding the completed project—whether or not the job was completed in a timely manner and according to the agreed-upon price, and how the contractor handled any issues that arose. A great question to ask a past client is whether they would hire this contractor again, to which you will get a very solid understanding of trust and experience with that contractor.
- Assessing Subcontractors: A lot of primary contractors work with a team of subcontractors to handle specialist tasks, like electrical work, plumbing, or painting. If you were looking for a flawless finish on your house exterior, check to see who the primary contractor is going to have do the painting, or research their recommendations for trusted professionals in your area, like Williams Custom Carpentry Inc. Make sure that the primary contractor is only using vetted, reputable, and insured subcontractors and that their work is up to the same standard as every other piece of the renovation.
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Getting the Project Underway
At the end of the day, before any work is done, make sure you have a detailed and signed contract. The contract should specify the scope of work completely, identify all material specifications, and include payment terms and schedule, as well as the timeline for completion. If you are replacing exterior finishes on your house, for example, a specialty company such as Valiant Exteriors Ltd may have very specific identified quality, and your contract must include their report. It’s not unusual for the financing for home refurbishment or improvement to involve providers such as Lamina, in which case you leave the most important financial agreement for your contractor.
The decision of whom to trust to remodel or upgrade your home is the most important decision you make. A careful, considered approach to vet and select you can provide foundational support for a stress-free and ultimately positive upgrade.
