Remodeling Fever
The successful completion of a remodeling project requires the careful orchestration of a myriad of details, trades, specialties, and materials. For a moment, imagine what would happen if buying a new car was like remodeling: the customer would order a new car and the manufacturer would design a one-of-a-kind model to the customer’s wishes. The customer could not see in advance what the car will look like. The manufacturer then sets a starting date and moves into the buyer’s home with a small factory in the living room to make that one car. The buyer is right there to notice when someone has the flu, when a tool dropped in the engine, even when a fender is nicked. Every evening the buyer examines the partially constructed car at leisure. How difficult that process would be!
The process creates a natural pattern of customer emotions during a typical remodel. Some of these rough spots will come from the natural process itself (demolition, drywall sanding, etc.) and some from errors on the part of the production crew (breakage, scheduling problems, mis-ordering, etc.). Remodeling is such a complex job, done under such disadvantageous conditions, that almost every job and almost every customer will have problems at one time or another.
We call this “Remodeling Fever”, and it is important to us that you understand the emotional side of remodeling. The stress is predictable enough to graph. Walt Stoeppelwerth and Linda Case, in their book Remodeling Production, have generated the following graphic description.
Here is what Walt and Linda have to say:
The contract is signed, and the customer feels a dream is about to be realized. This is the highest degree of happiness, optimism, and satisfaction.
Construction begins. Demolition, storage of materials in the customer’s space, the need for a telephone, key and bathroom bring realization to the customers that they will be under siege for a period of time. Their satisfaction level begins to slide.
Watching rough carpentry shape the space so quickly raises the customer’s expectations; the job seems to be going so well that undoubtedly it will be finished before the completion date.
The natural, slow pace of mechanical rough-in, inspections, insulation, and drywall, with numerous workers of various levels of thoughtfulness roaming the home, and unexplained delays, begin to take their toll on the customer. At drywall they hit bottom. The space makes almost no visible progress over a week, the drywall finishers may arrive at odd hours to do what appears to be invisible work, and then the ultimate blow of drywall sanding assures the most even tempered of homeowners that they have made a terrible mistake in undertaking remodeling.
The trim-out stage, which appears so simple to the layperson’s eye, moves ever so slowly. A day’s work makes almost no visible difference to the customer. At this stage, many customers feel the job will never finish. However, they do begin to have a good overall view of what the space will look like and how it will “live”.
Completion makes an improvement of outlook and a relief that the space will be the customers to use and live in.
Our team at A1DesignBuild offers you over 272 years of combined experience in the diagnosis and counseling of clients exposed to, and displaying the symptoms of, remodeling fever!!
How we get along is as important to us as the quality of our work and the pace of our progress.