Reality TV verses real world home remodeling

Planing a remodeling project? often encounter clients who, not by their own fault, believe in the “reality” of HGTV and the reality TV home remodeling shows that are all the rage right now.  On television, it’s a world of four-day kitchen remodeling, two thousand dollar bathroom remodels, and complex home additions that appear to take only a few weeks to finish, instead of several months in reality.  On the other hand, television can also show a plethora of nightmare scenarios, including homeowners getting hit with massive unforeseen costs while remodeling, and dealing with constant battles with the contractor.

Of course, there is a bit of truth to the remodeling shows, but they wouldn’t be very entertaining or sexy if they portrayed the way remodeling and construction really happen.  In reality, the home remodeling industry has a slogan of sorts that says when faced with a choice of “good, fast, and cheap,” you can only pick two. For example, if you want something done well (good) and completed quickly (fast), then it will probably not be cheap. If you want something cheap and fast, it will probably not be the best quality.  With that, we’ll have a look at these 3 components and what you actually need to consider when undergoing a remodel in real life—mainly the delicate balance of time, quality, and budget.

Time:

Everyone (myself included) would love to be able to build a home or remodel a kitchen in just a few short days; but that’s not reality.   If you are willing to spend a premium for your project, you may be able to reduce construction time by a few weeks.    Stacking the schedule with overtime labor, paying  subcontractors extra to make your project a priority over somebody already in their schedule, and paying extra to the different trades so that they are willing work together in often crowded confines (thus slowing them down), are some ways to do this.  In the end, it is almost always a bad idea to put unrealistic expectations on a contractor for finish a job in earlier than normal time.  It leads to undue stress for all parties, including the customer, contractor, and the production staff.

Quality.  Everyone knows that you get what you pay for.  The bigger the budget, the better the quality.  Broken down, quality equals two parts; materials and labor.  Better materials and plenty of time to put them together equals best possible quality!  Skimping on either the materials or the labor when remodeling your home almost always shows up in the finished product, and always shows up over the course of time.

Budget:

A generous remodeling budget can help pay for less time to completion, more bells and whistles, better quality products, and more qualified labor. There is nothing wrong with a conservative budget, however, understand that if your project is primarily budget driven, you’ll have to sacrifice a bit of quality and time.  In the end, you typically get what you pay for.

Masters Touch Design Build has over 18 years of experience at delivering high quality home improvement and remodeling projects and home renovation projects.  Our professional staff is well versed in helping our clients develop a good understanding of the careful balance among timing, quality, and budget.  Once we have achieved a conceptual design and have fleshed out a budget range, our design team goes to work with the keen understanding that we have a budget to respect.  Finally, when a project moves to production, our team of professional project managers and master craftsmen focus on delivering every project on time and on budget.  We have hundreds of happy clients to prove it!

Jacob Gadbois is the Production Manager at Masters Touch. Educated at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA, and experience certified through the Project Management Institute (PMI.org), he has found great personal advancement through the the core values set forth by Masters Touch ( Core Values ) , the words on the Wentworth crest (Honesty, Energy, Economy, System), and the principles of the PMI; which certifies competent Project Managers and is dedicated to this proposition of continual system improvement and higher learning.