In last week’s blog post, we talked about price, giving you an actual dollar sign number to estimate how much your addition is going to cost you here in Benton or Washington County. This inspired us to start a series of videos and blog posts to discuss the other things that many contractors and homeowners find difficult to talk about.
And so today we are starting with providing an overview of all the problems that can come up during a renovation or addition! In the coming weeks, we’ll be addressing each individually so you can know what to expect and how to avoid these when it comes to your addition or renovation project!
First: scope creep.
Now, we recognize “scope creep” isn’t a widely recognized term, so basically what that means is with your contractor, you have discussed and decided what is going to happen to your home. For whatever reason, down the road that starts to change.
Maybe it’s “oh, can we make this a little bit bigger?” or “whoops! didn’t expect to find that!” Whatever the reason for it, valid or invalid, as the work starts to deviate from the original plan, in comes scope creep, which can cost both your contractor and yourself money. Obviously this is a major issue, so we will be dedicating a video specifically to this problem and what some workarounds are in the coming weeks.
Second: it’s all in the details.
If we’re missing the details, that can be a problem! And so the more detail we can find and do at the very beginning of the project, before we move forward, the fewer problems we have down the road.
Third: problems with permits.
This is especially pertinent when you’re talking about septic permits, versus just using city sewer systems. Apart from that specific example, however, there can be any number of things that happen with permits, depending on what is being done to the house. As much as we hate it, sometimes getting the proper permits can take as much as four to six weeks to deal with.
Fourth: scheduling.
If the timeline doesn’t quite fit your intended target or if a particular project stretches out and takes longer than you intended, it can be a big problem. These timeline issues are no fun to deal with and, quite frankly, can make the whole transaction between the contractor and the homeowner difficult.
Closely related to this problem is our next issue that might be encountered:
Fourth, communication (or lack thereof.)
If you and your contractor aren’t communicating… well, it’s a BIG problem. There are a number of ways to make sure you can keep the communication lines open, however, so we will also be dedicating an entire video to just this issue!
And finally, fifth: the work you don’t see.
That’s an interesting one right? But with these projects, especially for home additions, there can be quite a few days where it feels like nothing has happened. You as the owner come home and think, “did they even do anything today?” And that’s where the problem can be, because there IS a lot that took place, you just don’t necessarily see it.
As an example, this week, our owner James has been working behind the scenes to get a new project started. Just this week alone, he has spent 12-15 hours just talking with different officials to pull permits and get an easement release. All of this is critical work that has to be done before anything else, and unfortunately it is not entirely in the contractor or homeowners control.
And those are your five biggest problems that you can encounter during your addition or renovation project! Of course, we realize this is just an overview and doesn’t necessarily provide the solutions YET, but we are gonna start talking about these problems, and their solutions, starting next week!
Why are we doing this? Because don’t you want to know? We certainly do! We all wanna know, even if we’re scared to talk about it. But at Valiant, we have decided to start addressing those elephants in the room, because wouldn’t it be nice to finally feel like you’re making an educated decision about your home and, more importantly, the work you put into it?
So look for those videos in the coming weeks and, as always, let us know how we can help you turn the house you like into the home you love!