Illustration by @Kampeck_ink
In 2020, with Americans spending so much time at home staring at the four walls, it should come as no surprise that demand for renovation has increased. With online hiring tools such as Home Advisor, Task Rabbit, and Thumbtack at your disposal, many people are simply initiating home projects themselves by scrolling through profiles and directly hiring people. Add to that mix potentially overdosing on dream scenario home reno shows like Fixer Upper where every dilapidated home becomes Miss America overnight (and mind you, I’m a fan…loved the episode with the house for sale for 13K…amazing) and you have a lot of typing, scanning, and unrestricted expectations going on.
Obviously every homeowner should be initiating a renovation process with care. What happens in many cities from San Francisco to Flagstaff to Ogunquit is that skilled, licensed contractors give priority to bigger jobs so your one room remodel may not interest them. This leaves a band of brothers and sisters who are “handypeople” who advertise themselves with construction experience which may or may not be true. Obviously for any work that involves structural changes, you should be hiring licensed contractors even if that means you have to wait for the right people.
The following chapters are designed to empower you so that you appear more professional on your approach, and more educated during a renovation process. If you are asking the right questions and setting the right standards (while also remaining polite) you will be more appealing to a contractor and the process will go more smoothly. When I was beginning a bathroom remodel and hiring my plumber Armando, I asked him why he decided to take my job and he said “I read what you wrote and said to myself, I can work with her.”
Brown M & Ms
You probably have all heard the story of how Van Halen would demand that all brown M & Ms be taken out of the bowl of M & Ms they liked to have in their green room before a show. The band did this not out of the hatred of the color brown but because it was a clause buried deep in their rider and they wanted to make sure that ownership actually read the rider. In the band’s mind, if a venue caught a small thing then all the dangerous big things would also be safe.
What is your brown M &M when you are hiring? One brown M & M for me is the smoke/Carbon Monoxide (CO) detector. One great contractor I worked with pointed out the poor placement of a CO detector in an existing home, buried in a corner where it wasn’t as effective. He also recommended buying separate CO and smoke alarms so that the homeowner could place them at different heights in the house. While all bedrooms and the hallways leading to these bedrooms should have CO and smoke detectors, CO and smoke operate differently in the airspace. Because CO is lighter than air, you actually want to place a CO detector at eye level, think five feet from the finished floor, while placing a smoke detector on the ceiling, at least two feet from a corner. According to the CDC, at least 430 people in the US die from accidental CO poisoning each year and 50,000 people gum up the works at the emergency room each year from CO poisoning. As an odorless and colorless gas, many people die from CO poisoning while they are asleep because our red blood cells pick up CO faster than oxygen. With the colder months coming up, that means more gas stoves, furnaces, and dryers running and potentially leaking and causing harm.
Tucking the Smoke Alarm Away in a Corner Doesn’t Let it Do Its Job
Consider that an average CO detector costs $22 and an average smoke detector costs $15 while a combination CO and smoke detector costs $55. Even buying separate products is cheaper for you.
And in California you need to have a smoke alarm in each bedroom and outside of each bedroom and on each level of your home. You will need a CO detector if you have a fuel fired appliance or fireplace or if you have an attached garage with an opening that communicates with a dwelling unit. The Code says that a CO detector should be outside each bedroom and at least one on each floor.
Lesson Here: Placement Matters Even on Simple Things
The Pitfalls of Buying Fixtures Yourself: Measuring Mistakes
Depending on the level of control you want to have over the project, you may be telling your contractor that you want to buy all the elements of the project yourself, such as fixtures and appliances. An important thing to remember when you are selecting elements that you see online is that a two dimensional photo operates differently in three dimensional space.
One homeowner I worked with fell in love with a Hansgrohe gooseneck faucet she had seen at a friend’s home. The product was indeed beautiful but the faucet she had seen at her friend’s home had been set up on a kitchen island where all facets of the faucet could operate in free space. The homeowner had ordered the faucet for her remodel without measuring all operational aspects of the faucet, most notably, the throw of the faucet (what turns the faucet from cold to hot). When the faucet arrived for install the throw could not move past 75 degrees before bumping into the back wall behind the sink and could not rotate completely to its hottest setting, Since the faucet took six weeks to arrive and she only had the contractor working for that week she had to return the faucet and wait another three months before she could get the contractor back on site and a faucet with the more appropriate throw ordered and delivered.
Most People Like Washing Dishes in Hot Water…Too Bad
The Pitfalls of Buying Fixtures Yourself: Code Issues
The other thing to think about when ordering product, and the reason many people actually hire designers, project managers, and architects for remodel projects is that something as simple as a faucet can have compliance issues from state to state. You may have seen online market places that will showcase a product but also message something like “not deliverable to California.” This is not because they don’t like where avocados and garlic are grown but because the state codes prevent the installation of the product on some level for energy reasons like its excessive water flow etc. This varies from state to state with California being one of the most stringent in energy compliance.
You may be thinking to yourself, well, I am not having this project permitted and inspected (something I would not recommend). Even if that is the case you may decide to sell your property in the future where it will be scrutinized if all aspects of the property are up to code. The actual product itself may also have a safety element attached that you aren’t considering.
One homeowner I know purchased a bronze tub faucet through Signature Hardware for a free standing slipper tub. She had the option of buying a cheaper and a more expensive version of the same faucet. She purchased the cheaper version not considering why the other version might be more expensive. When the project was inspected, even though performed by a licensed plumber, the inspector pointed out that the faucet was not up to code because it lacked an isolation valve which allows it to be turned off separately from the main. The owner had spent over $600 on this faucet and was past the return period. To accommodate the code issue the plumber had to install an isolation valve in the wall and connect it to the fixture directly adding more labor cost to the project than the cost of buying a faucet with the isolation valve added outright.
So This Simple Purchase Led To…
These Isolation Valves Had to Be Installed in the Wall to Bring the Faucet to Code…Could have Purchased a Faucet with Isolation Valve First
Making a Good Impression
During Pandemic Plus we may no longer be able to swing by someone’s shop or even meet them in person as an initial conversation to vet them. We are more and more dependent on the virtual world to make proper introductions. With some of these cautionary tales in mind you can make a good impression on a contractor or designer from the get go. Do your homework on the products you intend to buy and be willing to give over control on the areas where you feel unsure.