1. Before even attempting to hire anyone you must ensure that you have a direct plan for your project, including budget, time line, and renovation specifications, by doing this you will save yourself a great deal of time, money, and energy.
2. Ask for referrals. Same goes for anything, ask your family, friends, and colleagues’ opinions and see who they recommend and why, this has been a proven way to ensure a happy renovation for all parties involved.
3. Take your time when choosing contractors and other trades people, other than your original renovation plan, this is the most important thing you can do. Take your time, dot your I’s and cross your T’s, ask for certifications, photos, and past references. You want to ensure that you’ve covered all your bases before embarking on this huge project.
4. Get more than one quote. A second or even a third or fourth opinion is often a very good idea, you could benefit in two ways by doing this, one is you get to meet more people, maybe the right one is in there. Second, you may save yourself a lot of money and heartache, just by being sure.
5. If you come to the point where you’ve met two different contractors, one of whom can do the job faster and at a fraction of the cost, trust your gut. If you get an uneasy feeling for any reason I would strongly suggest listening to that feeling. Sometimes it is worth it to pay a little more and/or wait a little longer.
6. Before giving the go ahead to start a project have a friend or family member who is familiar with home projects or who has taken on the challenge themselves to read over the plan with you to help ensure you haven’t left any important matters out.
7. Before the workers get started make sure that you get a signed document that you keep in a safe place, noting that the workers are covered by insurance, this can protect you if someone gets injured in your home while on the job.
8. Good communication is key when attacking a large job such as this, make sure that your requirements, details, and goals are laid flat out and there are no questions left unanswered from yourself or the trades’ people.
9. Coinciding with Tip number nine, you must ensure to keep those lines of communication open during the task from beginning to finish. If you don’t reside at the place of project, arrange a time either at the beginning or end of each shift to see the progress that’s being done. If everything is going smoothly, offer words of encouragement and appreciation.
10. Make sure you are ready, you want to steer away from making any changes to the plan once work has begun, things could get quite confusing and costly if you decide to make changes.
When hiring someone to work on your home, it’s important to get the job done right and of your standards, so take the time to write out a detailed plan for your project to help ensure everything goes smoothly. It seems like these days there are so many scary stories of trades people who take advantage of their customers by not doing the job right, taking way to long & charging way to much. Truth be told, there are far more good builders, trades professionals & contractors than there are bad, the same in any business; there are always a small number of people you need to watch out for. The reason it’s so scary is because this is your home, the biggest purchase of your life. It’s imperative to take your time in finding the trades people that are perfect for your project. The best way to get good trades people are to get a referral from a friend, colleague or neighbour who have used these workers in the past.
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