By Tony Lotven
This post is the first in a three-part series offered to share our experience remodeling our home. Hodges Roofing & Siding provided the exterior work on our home.When I first starting talking about remodeling our house to friends, I heard story after story of ongoing projects that lasted months. My wife and I knew we had to move pretty much everything into the finished basement and live without a kitchen, surrounded by boxes, storage tubs, and all manner of accumulated stuff during the work phase. Like I told my friends, it was like moving without the truck.
To be clear, we now have a new roof and skylights, new siding, new replacement windows, two new windows where there once were walls, a new front door, two new sliding doors, new hardwood floor, new carpeting in the bedrooms and offices, new kitchen cabinets, and a new granite countertop. We also had the chimney cleaned, new firebrick for the insert, and a new chimney cap. Little extras also came into play like replacing outlets and moving electrical wire for the range hood. Once the work started, 95% of the work was completed in five weeks.
Meeting Deadlines with a Remodel
I knew going in I wanted us to have a hard deadline for completion, so we spent plenty of time pre-planning. My wife and I chose to act as our own general contractor in our best effort to work with three different companies (plus a few individual workers) and keep everything operating efficiently.
We spent time choosing the products, materials, and colors, shopping at local businesses, outlets, and big box stores. Once we picked and paid for our hardwood flooring and carpet, we locked in the installation start date for the floors. This was a key decision.
By making the decision on floor installation, we were able to create a sequence of events determined by the required order of work. So for example, we knew that two new sliding doors had to be installed before the flooring. Since the threshold of the new doors was different than the old doors, we had to get them installed so the flooring could be fit to the new thresholds.
The exterior contractor was also replacing the doors and windows. So we agreed to a drop dead date to have the new sliding doors installed. Once a contractor starts a job, they don’t necessarily want to piecemeal work. So the installation of the sliding doors became a key starting date for all the exterior work. It also gave us a drop-dead date for the kitchen contractor to remove the old kitchen.
There can always be unexpected situations and additional work needed. Fortunately, we did not have any major issues, such as rotting wood under the old roof. But we did find a cracked sink drain next to the wall in the kitchen. Fortunately, we were able to schedule a plumber to replace the drain pipe before the kitchen floor was installed, and prior to the new kitchen cabinets arriving. We had a three day window to get this done. The plumber also returned to connect all the plumbing in the kitchen after the cabinets and countertop were completed. We scheduled this in advance because we knew when these installations were planned. Once the cabinet order arrived at the contractor’s warehouse, we locked in the plumber to get our new kitchen online. After living without a kitchen for five weeks, we were totally ready to move back upstairs.
