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<\/a><\/b><\/p>\nEveryone wants to control costs, get it done fast and get the best possible quality. But not everyone wants to do the work. Some would rather negotiate a better price, discover a clever trick, find a new cheaper miracle material, hear about a guy who knows a guy who does a thing for an incredible price and hire him. But there is no such thing as a brilliant uninformed decision. That\u2019s crazy talk.<\/p>\n
Before you start interviewing contractors, craftsmen or tradespeople, give some thought to how you really live your life (not the way you imagine you\u2019re going to live it after your remodel, when you magically start entertaining three times a week). If you\u2019re remodeling your kitchen, go through the steps you will go through every day to make your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner \u2014 walking between your imaginary new refrigerator, your stove, your two sinks, your cooktop, your towel warmer. Research historic colors, historic design and kitchen ergonomics, examine the architectural details of your house as it is and decide if you want to use those details (hardware, molding, lighting) in your new project. It\u2019s not enough to pick up some color swatches from Home Depot \u2014 buy some paint, put it on a small piece of drywall, move it around the house, put the colors next to each other. Think things through. You\u2019re going to feel under a lot of pressure once the project begins, and making wrong decisions, slow decisions or no decisions can be costly and frustrating.<\/p>\n
Accept the fact that you don\u2019t know how much it costs.<\/b><\/p>\n
America is crazy about getting a deal. A recent study of Black Friday prices revealed that Americans will buy almost anything that\u2019s marked down 70 percent. And they turn up their noses at anything that isn\u2019t marked down at least 40 percent. But the typical Black Friday item was marked up before being marked down. Many a flat screen TV sold for less in the spring than it did in the fall on Black Friday. Consumers can\u2019t get a great deal because they don\u2019t know what a flat screen TV should cost. They don\u2019t know how much the materials cost, how much the labor costs, how much the marketing costs, how much it costs to keep changing the price tags.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t know what a flat screen TV should cost, how can you know what a kitchen remodel should cost, with its half-a-dozen major appliances, plumbing, electrical, tile, trim, flooring and a million other little components and details assembled by a small army of technicians, craftsmen, laborers and paper-shufflers? The three-bid method of selecting a contractor or tradesperson is just wishful thinking. Contractor A has the best price. Contractor B can do it fastest. Contractor C can deliver the best quality. After the wily homeowner gets his three bids, he thinks, I\u2019ll negotiate with C to get him to do it as fast as B and as cheap as A. That\u2019s impractical thinking. And if you persist in that, contractors are just going to tell you what you want to hear, and adjust either the quality, the timeliness or the price through excuses and change orders to bring you face to face with reality and satisfy their bottom line.<\/p>\n
Wake up, smell the coffee<\/b>.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are delusional,\u201d said Michel Khozam of ZMK Construction with a laugh. (Laughter seems to be the universal reaction when I asked contractors how homeowners could make their project go better.) Khozam was a systems engineer when he started flipping houses.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I fell in love with it. I became very fond of the idea of preservation. People who buy older homes are wired differently,\u201d Khozam said. He should know; he owns one himself.<\/p>\n
Old house owners are committed to the idea of the house as home, not an investment, he said. But even with the preservation-minded, \u201cthere\u2019s always that variable, of being delusional about the outcome. They under-estimate the disturbing costs involved in restoring a home. We can design everything to accommodate your modern needs on the inside of the house. But all designs are predictions. And all predictions are wrong. When I say that to my clients, they look at me and say, \u2018What they heck are you talking about?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you have a conceptual idea of what it should look like, we hire an architect,\u201d Khozam continued. But the plan is what it is: a conception. With that, the clients have a warped sense [of the outcome]. It takes me back to the word I used earlier, delusional. That\u2019s how they are looking at it. It\u2019s my job to minimize that.<\/p>\n
Hire someone you like and trust.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have a very close relationship,\u201d said Shawn Woolery of San Diego Sash. \u201cYou might as well spend your time with someone you like.\u201d Woolery manufactures windows and molding for historic houses, but more importantly, he has gone through the personal agony of his own whole-house remodel. When I ran his comment by Khozam, he agreed, but added that \u201cLikeable doesn\u2019t mean they are highly competent.\u201d So what should a homeowner be looking for?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a feeling,\u201d Khozam said. \u201cA feeling you get, a feeling the clients get toward someone. On many occasions, it\u2019s me; my knowledge about their home, details, the client\u2019s needs and wants \u2026 it\u2019s an emotional response. “That\u2019s how you choose. Our decisions in life are based in emotion. When people are spending a lot of money, it\u2019s very emotional. This is their life savings. It\u2019s the future of their kids. If they are going to be spending it, they better be spending it for the right thing.”<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Mark Twain said, \u2018Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. The outcome is always uncertain,\u2019\u201d said Khozam.<\/p>\n
In other words, Grasshopper, change is inevitable (and often painful) as the process moves from your bold idea, to the architect\u2019s drawing, to three-dimensional form, to the inevitable something you hadn\u2019t imagined, but actually really like.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone\u2019s seeking perfection \u2014 that\u2019s a good goal,\u201d Khozam said. \u201cBut perfection is reached at the end, not the beginning. That is the outcome of most projects. The anxiety has been building up for so long, once the clients see the finished product they become awestruck. We arrive at perfection. Don\u2019t seek perfection during the process. We\u2019ll find it at the end.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Take a deep breath. Listen to your feelings. Journey from ignorance to uncertainty to perfection. This is the Zen of home remodeling. Michael Good | HouseCalls Not every old house is historic. And not every room in a historic house can or should be preserved. With no place for a refrigerator, dishwasher, convection oven, toaster […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":246995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Remodeling Reality","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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