I’m going to be doing a full first floor remodel. I’m in the quote phase and had recommended from a friend. Professional company that does big projects. They charge a fee to give a quote and if I go with them they credit my account.
Is that standard practice?
Original estimate with just the salesperson who sent pictures was, $33,000 for this bathroom ,all lower tier package.
Then talk to my aunt into paying 26,000 cash, but wait, ONLY TODAY!!
A week later came for measurements and STILL UP THE PRICE ANOTHER $6,000.
AND THEY WANT TO STORE ALL THEIR MATERIALS IN THE HOUSE. WHICH THE HOUSE ISN'T EXACTLY BIG.
IS THIS NORMAL? FOR A COMPANY TO STORE THEIR MATERIALS INSIDE YOUR TWO BEDROOM ONE SMALLEST BATHROOM IN THE WORLD HARDLY ANY ROOM TO WALK HOUSE?????
Yo. Client asked to redo and add a deck on to their front porch. Where the deck will connect to the house is below max height for permitting in this area, but the deck extends out and will be well over max limit without permit.
Also, the standard pre-approved deck plans from the city seem to be for a standard square deck, but this project has a 45 degree corner where cantilevered joists will be different lengths and whatnot.
What I’m trying to get at: Do decking and fencing contractors/companies have an in-house person who is drawing up specs for additions and submitting for city approval or just building them and hoping for the best?
Our draftsman is overloaded with projects rn and our backup draftsman wants a $2000 minimum charge for a 100sqft deck, so we’re trying to design it ourselves by hand. 😝
Too often I finish a job and realize I didnt make as much money as I thought. Idk if this is just a me problem, but any advice on pricing out my quotes to make them more accurate?
TL;DR: Contractor’s signed drawings showed a double oven cabinet. We’re doing a microwave over a single wall oven. I questioned it in writing before signing, she confirmed it was correct and a trim kit would cover the gap. Wrong-looking cabinet arrives, my husband flags it BEFORE install, she confirms again “correct cabinet, just needs adjusting.” Her crew builds and installs it. NOW she wants a change order for “extensive modification and custom millwork” and has paused our flooring. I think she messed up somewhere upstream and now wants to charge me for her mistake.
timeline:
• April: Signed with a design-build contractor for a kitchen remodel. She presented the cabinet brand options, we picked a line from one of her suggested RTA cabinet companies.
• Early July: Signed a change order (\~$13k) that included relocating electrical specifically for the microwave/wall oven configuration. So the microwave-over-single-oven setup was paid for and documented.
• Mid July: She sends cabinet drawings via DocuSign. The oven cabinet is drawn as a DOUBLE oven. I ask her directly, hey, this shows a double oven, we’re doing a microwave above a single wall oven, is this right? Does the trim kit cover the dead space? She replies: yes, correct cabinet, no extra space, trim kit and/or filler covers it. I sign it.
• Also relevant: we picked the microwave at a design showroom with a rep she knows, her assistant reviewed the model before we purchased, and she personally looked at the unit the day it arrived. We bought the trim kit she named as the solution.
• Mid August: Cabinet gets built on site. It has ONE oven opening. My husband messages the group thread before install: “Looks like the oven cabinet is the wrong one. Where is the space for the microwave?” Her reply: yes this is correct, there’s actually only one size for the wall oven cabinet from this company, and “it is adjusted accordingly.” No mention of cost and it reads like it’s handled to me.
• Her crew installs it anyway.
• today: She sends a long message saying that during installation they “discovered” the cabinet “requires significantly more field modification than anticipated,” that the cabinet company “provided us with incorrect information,” that she’s never installed this cabinet line before, and this will be a change order.
• Also now: flooring is paused because supposedly the whole cabinet has to come out.
I don’t think I should pay a change order…
Nothing changed. The design is identical to what was signed and paid for. A change order is for changed scope. This is the same scope she quoted.
She confirmed the cabinet was correct TWICE in writing, in response to direct questions, before installation.
I checked the cabinet line’s catalog. There is no double oven cabinet in the entire collection. The SKU on our drawing is a single oven cabinet. So the drawing depicted a configuration that literally doesn’t exist for this brand. She specced it, she drew it and when we questioned it she confirmed it.
she said she “Never worked with this line before”, she’s the one who presented this company as an option. We pay her a 20% management fee so she can verify all the construction and design (Which she also adds to every change order, so she’d be charging a management fee on her own management failure.)
Our contract says change orders must be documented and authorized in writing BEFORE the work they cover. The cabinet was built and installed with zero mention of additional cost or a change order needed. And now it needs to be ripped out and modified on our dime?
If the modification was always going to be needed, the time to price it was before I signed the DocuSign, not after everything was built and installed and I have zero leverage.
For context, the project is already 40%+ over the original quote and we’ve signed and paid every legitimate change order, so I don’t think we’re being difficult clients. We just don’t think we should fund her error.
She’s pausing floor installation which was scheduled to start tomorrow because now that cabinet needs to be removed to be altered. Since this is an RTA cabinet I’m concerned about damage and how the alterations will look. Nothing can compare to the factory look. If she stalls the job what can I do?
Athens, GA. Is this too much for rebuilding two bathrooms? Both bathrooms are small, and essentially the same, 10.8ftx5ft. One bathroom is going to be slightly nicer (tile floor vs LVP, tile walls vs just paint).
I’m a first time homeowner dealing with two bathroom rebuilds after water damage. Both bathrooms are now gutted down to the studs, and the water remediation company sent a quote for the rebuild that is significantly higher than what insurance is offering (though I’m sure they are low-balling as well).
I’m assuming using the water remediation company vs another specialized company would be more expensive, but I just bought the house earlier this year and have never dealt with this kind of stuff before. It would be convenient, but I want to know if I should find someone else. This just seemed excessive.
I appreciate any help! Thanks!!
hi! my husband is a handyman and next step for his career I believe is getting his contractor license. he makes good money when things are busy but when things get slow… it’s rough. where should he start? is there any advice or insight what would u do differently in your career?
I wanted to warn local homeowners in the Greater Hamilton area about my experience with Tri Us Asphalt and Kyle Scott.
I paid $1,500 in deposits for driveway/asphalt work. After receiving my money, no work was completed, and despite repeated attempts to contact Kyle regarding the work and getting my money returned, the situation has not been resolved.
Based on my experience, I believe I was scammed, and I personally consider Kyle Scott to be a scam artist.
Since this happened, I have also come across multiple other allegations and complaints from people describing similar experiences involving Kyle Scott and/or Tri Us Asphalt. I’m sharing this so other homeowners in the Greater Hamilton area can be aware and do their research before handing over a deposit.
If you have dealt with Kyle Scott or Tri Us Asphalt and experienced something similar, please send me a private message. I’m particularly interested in hearing from anyone who paid for work that wasn’t completed, couldn’t get their deposit returned, or has documentation such as receipts, e-transfers, contracts or text messages.
I’m documenting my experience and would like to connect with others who may have been affected.
I'm an independent hvac installer and lately my phone is blowing up with homeowners who completely bypass the supply house markup to get their own split system heat pump equipment. A guy literally texted me a link to a costway thundrive 18000 btu 2 zone 20 seer2 mini split this morning and told me he just wants me to show up with a torque wrench and a vacuum pump for my hourly rate. I get why they do it since retail pricing is crazy right now, but I hate touching equipment I didn't source. For the guys who have given in and started installing homeowner-supplied hardware, what is your written policy on callback warranties if the compressor just decides to randomly grenade a month later?
my whole business lives in coconstruct. estimates, selections, invoicing, all of it. now that buildertrend owns it and put it in maintenance mode, i know i have to move but honestly the switch itself isn't what keeps me up at night. it's the migration.
the part nobody warns you about is getting your own data out. no bulk export, files trapped in the platform, downloading stuff one at a time until you give up. i shouldn't have to fight my own software to get my own job history back, but here we are.
for those of you who've already jumped:
- how bad was the actual data export? did you get everything or did you lose selections/change order history? - how much downtime did it cost you mid-project? - did you move during a slow stretch or just rip the bandaid off?
i run 4-8 jobs at a time as the estimator, PM and salesman all in one, so i can't afford a week of chaos while i rebuild everything. trying to learn from people who already did it before i pick a landing spot. what actually went wrong for you?
Builder here, what do homeowners misunderstand most about construction costs?
Is there anybody that's been in construction for a long time that would have advice on big mistakes that cost them time or money that they wish they knew sooner? Things like always having a signed quote or change order before doing any work. Things like this that would be helpful for some of us to know that are just starting off our careers?
I'm a contractor and one of my customers needs his roof fixed. It's leaking and it's coming from this general area. I suggested reframing a new valley that starts up toward the top of the ridge in the back and running all the way down to where the picture was taken.. In my mind this will create more of a pitch and effectively get rid of the dead valley... THOUGHTS?
Curious what people do in practice, not in the contract.
Invoice goes out, they ignore the first couple of nudges. At what point do you refuse the next job? Do you say it out loud or just get "busy"? And how do you even keep track of who’s in the doghouse vs who just forgot?
I keep a list and I still screw it up. Someone pays and I forget to take them off, or I keep taking work from someone who’s 40 days out.
What’s your actual line?
I hired a contractor to completely renovate my bathroom 1.5 years ago. The tiles on the shower floor are already coming loose and I'm not sure what's causing it or what to do. The tiles are 1x1' sheets of 1.5" hexagons and the grout is coming loose, cracking, and crumbling around some of the individual tiles.
The contractor I hired seemed very professional so I'm surprised that I'm already having issues. Part of me wants to call him and ask him to fix it, but another part of me wonders if he or his crew installed the tiles improperly and I'm better off finding someone else. I've never experienced titles coming loose like this even in very old homes.
What would ya'll do in this situation? What is correct etiquette when asking for repairs on work that was completely 1.5 years ago.
I've been out of town since my cabinets were installed. I have a camera set up in my living room, and I can see the installers left a bunch of cabinet packaging in there, and presumably in other rooms as well.
I'm returning on Friday, and when I asked my contractor about trash removal I was told "Yes, removing all construction debris, packaging, and garbage from the job is included. There will be some garbage on site when you return. Everything will be removed by the end of the job."
Is this normal process? So it's normal to just have all this packaging take up space in other rooms?! It's not acceptable to me so I guess I'm just gonna go ahead and move that shit myself.
Here's a pic from my cam of what my living room currently looks like:
Question for other GCs/remodelers. Between running a job site, coordinating subs, and actually doing the work, estimate requests come in constantly — a text, an Instagram DM after someone sees a before/after post, a form fill on the website, a referral call. By the end of a long day I've got requests scattered across four different places and I genuinely lose track of who I already called back and who I haven't.
I know it's cost me at least a couple jobs — not because my price was wrong, just because someone else got back to them faster.
Curious what everyone else actually does here. Spreadsheet? Notebook? One of the big platforms like Buildertrend or JobNimbus? Or is everyone just running on memory and hoping nothing slips?
Hello Builders and Contractors. Has anyone tried targeting the local area with letters through the letter box? Does this work in bringing clients in at all?
Started helping a friend who owns a small GC company with his back office stuff. I come from software so construction is new to me, and I did not expect bidding to eat this much of his week.
A request comes in as a PDF. Sometimes clean, sometimes a scan you can barely read. He drops it into his system, finds a door on the plan to work out the scale, and measures square footage from there.
Then it’s a day or two of counting, chasing sub contractors and typing numbers into a spreadsheet he’s been refining/using for years.
Last week revised drawings showed up mid bid and he spent an evening just hunting for what changed.
I keep thinking this can’t be normal but he says that’s just how does it, adapt on the fly.
For people who do this every week, how many hours does a typical bid take you from the plans landing in your inbox to the price going out?
Partial home renovation and I’m the owner. We hired a small team of contractors - 3 people team including GC. Sometimes only 1 person is on site, sometimes all 3. What’s bothering me is that their arrival time varies everyday. Sometimes 7:30AM, sometimes 10AM, sometimes 1PM…. They seem to make progress everyday but obviously a lot more can be done. I suspect they have multiple jobs and juggling the staffing. But is this concerning?
Also they never game me a timeline of construction milestones with target dates. We do have a target end date though (although at this rate I’m not sure they can meet it). Should they provide some sort of timeline of milestones?
