Adding On: Planning, Patience, Persistence Pay
In January, 1989, my wife and I finally decided to remodel our 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath Burbank house. We wanted to add a large family room with lots of windows and cabinets. I wanted a wet bar and a fireplace.
What follows is a month-by-month account of how our addition went, what we learned from other people’s problems and mistakes, and how we avoided many remodeling pitfalls by setting a realistic budget and schedule.
February, 1989.
We tell our friends and relatives that we plan a major addition to our home. Immediately we hear remodeling horror story after horror story. We read with earnest all the L.A. Times Remodeler’s Diary articles, determined to avoid the negative experiences nearly all of the writers describe.
March, 1989.
No one knows a contractor they have used whom they can recommend. We try to find a room we like in one of hundreds of remodeling magazines. (This seems to be the business to be in.)
May, 1989.
We find a room in a magazine that meets our needs. Lots of windows, it’s a sun room. Nice use of Mexican pavers to match our exterior back-yard patio. Built-in storage cabinets, which cover an entire wall. Perfect for our needs. Still no good references on contractors.
June, 1989.
Mom and Dad visit. Mom strongly suggests we add a second bathroom after four of us struggle for three days to use our one bath. Our thoughts turn to tiles and bathroom fixtures. My wet bar becomes a distant memory.
July, 1989.
More contractor horror stories from friends and L.A. Times. Two common threads in everyone’s story: over budget, over schedule. Usually the contractor is blamed for both problems. We determine to set a realistic schedule and budget, based on worst-case scenarios, not homeowners’ and contractors’ optimistic estimates. Also, we won’t remodel unless we can find a good contractor.
August, 1989.
We finalize a schedule. We estimate our plans will take three months but add another month, just in case. Selection of contractor plus start-up time should be three months. Actual construction based on Remodeler’s (Murphy’s) Law--six months. This means 13 months altogether. If we start our plans this September, we should finish by October, 1990. We set a preliminary budget at $35,000 to 50,000.
September, 1989.
Since our project contains many windows, I contact our local window dealer in hopes of finding a building designer. He doesn’t know any. I ask him if he knows any contractors who might know a building designer. He knows only one contractor he can recommend: Ed. Ed comes over, looks at what we want to do and suggests we contact Terry. Terry says he is busy, can we wait a few weeks? So much for a quick start.
October, 1989.
Terry videotapes, measures and sketches our existing floor plan. Terry is great. By the end of October he has initial floor plan and great ideas for placement of fireplace and bathroom.
November-December, 1989.
We earnestly talk to friends and acquaintences, anyone at all about contractors they would recommend. Finally, we get a few possibilities.
January, 1990.
Our plans are done, only two weeks behind schedule and for less than $2,000. In the meantime we have found four contractors to get bids from.
Ed is first. Ed, bless him for telling us about Terry, gives us a wishy-washy bid, not firm. Even though I ask twice, Ed doesn’t give us any references. I know from Remodeler Diaries, this won’t cut it. Sorry, Ed.
A second contractor, Pat, is great. We visit two of his projects, one completed, one just starting. Both customers are very satisfied. Pat gives us a firm bid that is not great, but within our range. Pat can’t start as soon as we want him to. He doesn’t give us a firm breakdown on prices, but says he will if we choose him. We tell Pat maybe.
Next is Carmen. Carmen is doing a near tear-down and rebuild of my wife’s supervisor’s house. Carmen is cheap. He gives us a firm bid of $20,000 less than either Pat or Ed. This we like. But Carmen won’t give us any references, nor will he give us any breakdown on prices. We say no to Carmen. (As of this writing my wife supervisor’s home is a long way from being finished.)
John is the last contractor on our list. We love John, even though he is expensive. We look at several of his projects and his work is excellent. John gives us a firm bid in the high $50,000s and a price breakdown and says he can start right away. In fact, he can start sooner than we want. We negotiate and compromise with John to get price down to very low 50s, and reset our final budget to $60,000, knowing we will make some changes as we go. We sign with John.
April, 1990.
The day after Easter, work begins. John’s foreman, Russ, is great. A pleasure to work with. Within a week the foundation is dug.
May, 1990.
By the first week in May the foundation is in and the framing going up quickly. I suddenly realize that the plans call for single-pane windows. I tell John I want double-pane windows. John says “no problem,” and orders windows changed. Can you say “$500 dollars?”
Into fourth week, framing is done, but plumber doesn’t show up. The inspector can’t inspect plumbing or framing. The guys keep working; there are other things they can do.
End of fourth week, plumber shows up. John predicts they should have everything done by June 16. I tell him that seems a little optimistic as it is May 16 already.
Week five, the back patio window comes out. The drywall goes up. The roofing contractor somehow upsets the building inspector, who promptly gets nasty and delays inspection again. I call the building inspector and things get back on track.
The plaster work begins. Like everyone else, we can’t keep up with the dust and dirt. My wife says “we will never remodel again.”
Week six. The air-conditioner contractor installs just one vent into our addition. I ask John, “Is this going to be enough to cool the whole room?” John assures me that they can make adjustments and force enough air into the addition. We are skeptical. As the interior work progresses, I keep a constant vigil on that single duct.
The cabinets go in, which we think are too large to fit. Russ trims the cabinets down and they fit perfectly. The tile is beautiful, even though the tile contractor throws grout into my rose beds. By now we have learned to get excited only about the really big things. Like the air conditioning.
June, 1990.
John’s predicted June 16 finish date comes and goes. Still, our predicted date is months off, although I don’t tell John that.
The really hot weather arrives. I measure the temperature in the addition. It is eight degrees warmer than the rest of the house. We discover that several of the other ducts have collapsed, apparently a result of the air-conditioning contractor stumbling over them as he put the new duct in. One of the ducts is loose, and we find out that we have been cooling the attic for several weeks.
July, 1989.
The air-conditioner/heating contractor won’t come back, says he is too busy. The addition is nearly finished, but unbearable on hot days.
John has another job, which takes him to Utah. Once in Utah, John has yet another job, which takes him to Canada. I figure John will call from Siberia next. We start to count our losses. We’ll have to hire another air-conditioning contractor to install a second duct and fix the collapsed ducts. John assures me over the phone that he will take care of everything.
John, still in Canada, hires a friend to install a second air-conditioning duct. But once the duct is in, virtually no air comes out. The guy who installed it says it works OK. I say it doesn’t.
I finally figure I need to give him a visual clue to prove that virtually no air comes out of the second duct. I take pieces of yarn and attach it to every duct in the house, those that work and those that don’t. Even though the yarn hangs straight down from the duct John’s friend had just installed, he thinks it is OK.
August, 1990.
John returns. The yarn works for John. He gets the air-conditioner/heating contractor back out and has it fixed in one day. The yarn turns out to be one of my better ideas. I feel guilty for having doubted that John would make everything right.
On Sept. 1, four weeks ahead of our own deadline, we move in. Our total cost is several thousand dollars under our final budget of $60,000 and includes major items not covered in our remodeling contract: a new roof, a new concrete driveway, some badly needed electrical work and new carpet throughout the entire house.
November, 1990.
We have been in our addition for three months. We love it. I think the most important thing we did was to set a realistic schedule and budget. We had learned to be pessimistic from others who had been far too optimistic.
Remodeling or doing new construction is not like driving to your local service station and filling the tank up with gas, although lately they seem to be equally expensive. Our schedule gave us enough time to interview four contractors, check their work and pick the one that best met our needs.
The other thing we learned was that there were important times to be hard-nosed, such as with the air conditioning. By making it known early on that we thought one duct wasn’t enough, we paved the way for eventually getting the second duct put in. It was like playing a game, but it worked. As a result, we were happy with John and I can refer him to other people.
By the way, my mother loves our new bathroom and I don’t miss the wet bar I never had. And my wife still says “I will never remodel again.” We’ll see.
Dietel is director of communications at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. READERS WELCOME TO SHARE THEIR REMODELING TALES Readers wishing to share their remodeling experiences should send queries or manuscripts to Real Estate Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, 90053.
