Building or remodeling a bathroom can be a very exciting experience or a nightmare. A high percentage of clients I have worked for have had a very bad experience with a contractor in the past, among which I can count are Eternal deadlines, unfinished work, theft within the property, subcontracting 100% of the work, execution of the project as a part-time job, take the money and leave, installations outside all building codes, work without guarantees, lawsuits for breach of contract, etc… The list seems to be endless and continually growing. Therefore, I am encouraged to share with you some important tips when hiring a contractor for remodeling a bathroom.
Choosing Contractor for Remodeling a Bathroom
How is the price built?
It is common to think that an expensive contractor is better than a cheap one. Many contractors set their prices depending on the face of the clients, that is if they think the client has money or if the project is in a higher income area, they tend to charge more. Also, if they do not want to execute the project because they do not know how to do it, they will tend to charge more. In order to differentiate good contractors from the rest, a good exercise is to understand how the final price of the project is built. A professional contractor will deliver an estimate with specific items and standardized charges, and this type of contractor creates budgets all the time, therefore they tend to standardize their prices. I could say that a final price that was built item by item and where the origin of each charge is clearly specified, comes from a contractor who really knows what he is doing. On the contrary, a contractor who only gives you a total number to pay has a high probability of being the type of contractor that you should avoid.
How often will you see the remodeling contractor?
A good contractor will not necessarily personally execute the project, they generally have specialized work teams for each stage of the project. In a bathroom remodeling, the following equipment will interfere: Demolition, plumbing, electricity, framing, drywall, taping and texture, tile, among others. A good contractor will introduce each member of their team to the homeowner and explain each stage of the remodeling project. On the contrary, a bad contractor will be seen on the job site only when he has to collect money. It should be expected that a contractor is frequently present for considerable periods of time and ready to answer questions or deal with problems that arise during the execution. If you only see your contractor on payday, it is very likely that your project has been outsourced completely or in a large percentage. The problem with outsourcing is that the homeowner loses control over the project and the subcontractor does not feel the responsibility that he should feel if the project were his own. Therefore, the project remains in limbo.
Licenses and insurance.
Concord has ever-evolving regulations, allowing both the contractor and the project owner to be relatively protected from scams. Green Group Remodeling is a division of the Concord Chamber of Commerce in charge of managing and controlling professional licenses within the state, on its website, among other things, you can find out if the contractor you are evaluating to hire has the necessary licenses to execute the remodeling project. You can search by the name of the contractor and in a few seconds know all the information related to the license. Despite having this easy-to-use tool, many homeowners do not do a contractor background check because they “trust” the contractors’ word of mouth.
Past jobs.
Nowadays it is very common for remodeling contractors to have in their possession a set of photographs of each of the jobs they have carried out in the past. These photographs can be found on our websites and on social networks. If your contractor doesn’t have photos posted you can ask them to show you past jobs right from their phone. If your contractor doesn’t have pictures of recent work you should raise a red flag and ask more questions about it.
References.
Today various platforms on the internet allow users to rate the service received by contractors, sites such as Angie, Home Advisor, Yelp, and Porch among others work based on references. Google developed a way to receive and manage referrals from businesses. Therefore, having references from contractors is not something difficult to obtain. To go deeper into this matter I can add that care must be taken when checking references; this is because some contractors buy references from google to show a false performance of their businesses on the Internet. So I can conclude that a contractor with quality references is better than one with many references of dubious origin. Angie has a reference verification system so it can be said that her references are more reliable.
