I’m new to this forum and happy to gain insight from all of you.
I’m in the middle of a home renovation and I’m currently managing the entire project by myself.
I am not making any big structural changes and thought it would be easy to find my own contractors for each specific task but this is proving to be more tiring than I first imagined.
We are redoing the kitchen, two bathrooms, flooring and painting of the entire home.
I have just gone through the process of skim coating all the walls smooth (old popcorn texture). I hired one guy to do this which turned into a bit of a mistake as it obviously took twice as long had I hired a company.
I’m now looking for a middle to high end kitchen company and would love any recommendations as well as recommendations for parquet flooring.
I have already spent numerous hours in showrooms and had samples sent ti my home only to pick one and find out it’s not available until next year.
Have any of you done an entire home renovation alone without a contractor or project manager that can offer insight into the pitfalls you encountered along the way and if you suggest hiring someone to manage it is the way to go.
I did kitchen, floors, painting and windows (bathrooms yet to be done).
I had some walls removed too and the guy was great. Got rid of the kitchen, interior wall and false ceiling and fixed up everything ready for the kitchen install.
He also subcontracted the electrician who did all the lights and new electrics and got a plumber when they had an accident with the water pipes.
Painting. I hired one guy to do it and regretted it. Hired a company and paid $$$ to redo it. Some rooms I painted myself.
Flooring, I did on my own.
Kitchen I had all the stuff delivered and was to be installed, but then covid hit and then all installations were cancelled. After waiting a while with no new installation date, I had to bite the bullet and install it myself.
Your jobs seem to be largely standalone, so I guess you don’t need a project manager. When you buy your kitchen or bathroom from a company, they should just do everything for you.
Is the guy who removed your kitchen self employed? Can you share his contact info? I will need to have my old kitchen removed and I like that your guy helped with acquiring an electrician.
Did you go with parquet flooring throughout your home? If so do you have any regrets? I’m concerned a bit with upkeep of an oak floor with natural oil finish.
I take very good care of my home but I also don’t want to constantly babysit a floor or if the maintenance is high I may consider another option altogether.
I did, except in the cellar and bathrooms. There’s not much upkeeping. Probably helps to use felt pads for your chairs or a mat for your office chair and to re-oil it after a few years. But I’d do that with tiles (except the oiling), as well due to the sound.
No issues with spillage, but there are be some (mostly kids-caused) scratches or dents which you don’t notice anymore after a while and adapt the mindset that it’s meant to be used.
On the upside, I much prefer the look and haptic, so no regret at all.
Can’t comment on the initial question, as I’ve built with a new construction with a contractor and I just dealt with per-picked sub-contractors and show-rooms to pick things. Certainly makes things easier, but it comes down to how much you enjoy doing the whole coordination yourself.
We are doing a big renovation. Floors, Skim coating all walls.,painting, kitchen and bathrooms. I’m finding it a bit difficult to coordinate all of the work.
Skim coated all walls first. This is finally close to completion but I went with one guy and he takes forever. I will go with a company for the painting as they will send two people plus an apprentice.
We removed all the old flooring ourself. Most floating but the hallway was glued on. We had to hire someone to remove the glue. When we purchased the home they said it was all floating and we didn’t check. One tip: don’t try to remove old glued on floors by yourself unless you’re an accomplished DIYer. It takes forever unless you rent a large machine.
Kitchen removal is next-then flooring. This is getting a bit tricky with timing all workers. There was an issue with the order of the floors and now the kitchen will need to wait 4-6 weeks. The kitchen installers can’t do the new time….etc. If you hire a contractor they usually work with different trade people and can coordinate better than a private homeowner.
This is my first renovation and I’m finding more things happen that in turn throws off the timing for the next scheduled worker. It’s no big deal but we will be left without a kitchen for a lot longer than we originally thought. We expected a lot of the work to be done while we were on holiday and it didn’t turn out that way.
If you have light renovations then I don’t think it’s necessary and if you have a lot of time to manage mistakes that will inevitably happen. My German is also B level and many trade people don’t speak English.
If I ever did another renovation I would hire a contractor/project manager. That’s not without faults but I’d have one person to handle the reshuffling of workers.
I’d consider it once several companies from different trades are involved and their work depends on each other or is even integrated. It’s not only to coordinate everything like Lucy describes, but if anything goes wrong, they’d just pass the blame to each other, and it results in delays or high extra costs.
So not for some very small work
As said, my experience is from a whole building and there’s scores of companies involved. But if you re-do, for example the kitchen and the work requires an electrician or plumber, I’d expect the kitchen studio to make you aware, have a partner they trust and subcontract and cover all the coordination.
I was told to do the floors first (not floating). I will have to rethink this. .
They said it helps with leveling the kitchen and it’s easier for them to install? Oh no.
It depends on the kitchen layout and how you do it. All my cabinets are mounted on the wall. So you put all cabinets/appliances first and then after that you do the tiling.
Thanks for this. I didn’t think about the blame being put on the ‘other’ guy. Oops. I really do wish I had hired a company to handle this renovation as I really don’t know all of the ins and outs.
if floor first in the kitchen does not depend on the kitchens layout. it is simply a personal choice. The more boarders you have when laying the floor the longer you have. thats why especially with an island most workers like to do the floor first. That means you will have floor under your entire island.
Or maybe if it is a big island there wont be floor under the entire thing, but at least they can do the edges etc quick&dirty and do nit need to cut every board precisely.
We have have everywhere expect bathroom Bauwerk parquet - even with 2 toddlers. Sure there are stains and marks. but many of them come off with cleaning. In the kitchen I apply new oil 2x/year. It goes faster than cleaning with a mob.
When the kids are ten or so we will sand the floor to get the biggest stains out, the rest will remind us of the great time we had together.
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