How to hire a Remodeling Contractor
Remodeling in Pinellas County
New Kitchen or Bathroom is very important to you and your Family. The added space or versatility in use or just updating the design to something current requires selecting a licensed contractor to do the work.
There are many steps in the process and everyone wants to save money. What typically happens is the cheapest path becomes the most expensive and sometimes never completed. Horror story after horror story, clients have paid contractors more than 50% + of the contract and no or little work is completed in place.
Make sure you have answers to these questions in writing:
What precisely is the scope of work?
How long will the work take overall?
What are the work hours/days?
Will I be out of a Kitchen for 2 weeks or 9 months?
What happens if the project takes a year?
What happens if you did not add work but the Contractor wants more money?
Who is responsible for managing the subcontractors?
Is the contractor capitalized to operate business?
Typical issues
Google Reviews, There are companies you can hire to create multiple positive Google reviews. Companies with lots of positive reviews are not safe from being bad companies. But there is a way to vet the reviews to help pick good from bad. Read the reviews and you will start to see who the company truly is. You can tell the fake ones from real, the anger from clients and the absurdity from the contractors responses.
Renovation in Naples
If you follow these steps you will reduce a bad experience.
Read the reviews and responses.
Stay away from narcissistic responses from the contractor.
Meet face to face with the contractor and go over the work ask about all details.
Review the estimate provided by the contractor beyond the price, look for details= product description, qty, cost.
Ask for written language of time duration and how will the work be managed.
Ask for missing details to be added.
Define what you are expected to do and what you expect from them.
Add language for delays.
Transparency
Selecting the contractor because they provided the lower cost doesn’t mean that is the real cost. I have seen this numerous times over the years, clients pick the lower cost.
Now what?
The number was wrong, the contractor did not include 1/2 the work and you find out when you are to far in. You signed a contract that has no finish details but pages of how you cannot give a bad review or negative press.
If you have no details explaining what is included in your project then do not hire the contractor, this is true for Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC, Roofing, or General Contracting, Lawn Mowing, Car Repair, etc.
Contractor not showing up
Above we discussed how to avoid a bad situation, but what if you are already in one?
Here are some things you need to know.
Confront your contractor and request a completion schedule in writing, make sure you paper all interactions going forward.
Request a list of who and what was paid to date along with signed, notarized lien waivers.
The lien waivers are proof of payment and you need to know who was paid and how much by your contractor.
Regardless of how much you paid your contractor, if the subcontractors were not paid they can legally (within 90 days) lien your home and foreclose on your property.
The state of Florida is very difficult to obtain a contractor license. You can use this as leverage, all contractors are out of business without a license. Report your contractor, it is a class one felony to take a clients payment and use the funds for anything outside of the clients project.
Threaten a lawsuit and hire an attorney. Most likely you have paid for the majority of the work and nothing or hardly anything is completed on site. Hire an attorney and go after the liability insurance the contractor has, also you can go after the state for allowing this person to operate. If this has happened to you there is a very high probability there are many more clients in the same situation, find them and share the cost.
If you have come to terms, sign a new amendment to go with your original contract. Be certain to have an agreed completion date, cost to complete, timeline and penalty for delays, all missing details of what is included, and all lien waivers that match your overall payments to date and request lien waivers for all future payments.
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