We just went through a rehab project on my mother in laws house that was out of necessity, as she was forced to go into nursing home due to illness.. However, I did tackle this as a learning experience as well, as I have not done a full rehab, and I knew we would learn a lot.
Home: 3 bed 1 bath 900 square foot single story ranch, nothing special for this area, a standard small ranch style 'starter' type home. Built in 1960, but poorly maintained, needed full rehab, new kitchen, walls, bathroom redone, etc.
We needed to keep costs down, but do quite a bit of work, and I wanted to highlight some things for people that we ran across, so maybe on your first rehabs you don't run into the same issue..
1- We waited until selling the house and to have the buyer do the inspection. This was a mistake, we should have brought in a house inspector ourselves to point out the problems that were going to get flagged by ANY house inspector, and fixed them first. They will find things you don't see if your not a house inspector/builder/contractor yourself, and would save the trouble of having a buyer get to see these first!
2- Duration - everything seems to take longer than anticipated, as you will run into things that couldn't be known at the beginning, or just were not thought of. In addition, a missed milestone or time line in your plan can cascade into scheduling nightmare with other contractors. For example, a missed deadline for installing electrical work and plumbing caused delay in Insulation being put in, which then caused scheduling shuffle with those teams, and then had to postpone wallboard and plaster, which in turn pushed out the painting teams, etc, etc.. This takes a lot more effort and timing to coordinate as you would hope, as the contractor has other jobs they have to work/schedule as well. Probably can't overstate the importance here...
3- Contractors - the old adage you get what you pay for applies here. A LOT. I used some referrals from friends and acquaintances on this in hopes to keep the costs down, as my elderly mother in law did not have a lot of money on hand for this. This is the biggest of the headaches, not returning phone calls, showing up weeks after they are supposed to, poor quality work, not adhering to code requirements... I can go on and on here but can't imagine doing things this way again. Let me give you an example that has now ended my acquaintance with said persons, which is too bad, as they are friends of my friend and I will be seeing this person around in the future. I just don't care to even acknowledge him any more.
(Sorry, this is also a bit of a rant below, but if it helps one of you to keep away from this type of issue, at least that will be some good out of it...)
- One of the last things we found we needed to do was replace the roof (Another mistake, we should have done this FIRST) Got a decent quote, and accepted, I know they can do the work, as I have seen some of his other work.
- 4 weeks later, after repeated unanswered phone calls, and supposed 'scheduling conflicts', finally roof work starts. This is after complaints all along before we agreed to job about how contractor was desperate for work and money.
- half of roof is completed in a weekend after some difficult removal of old roofing. This is good, and I acknowledge the extra effort that it took.
- Two more weeks of no work, no phone answering, and I finally get my friend to contact the person to get the other half done! Another week later, the other half is stripped and progressing. I get an update that some extra materials are needed, and he'll be finishing up. I think Finally! but after a week I go over to check the house to find that part of the roof is stripped and was only covered with a tarp, and left like that for well over a week.. I walked into the living room that was new, new plaster, and already primed to find a 12 foot water stain along the seams from the rains we had over a couple of days during that week. :bgh: I inform the worker, and finally get the roof mostly completed by the end of the next week. I eat this mistake of his, as I know he'll never get it fixed. (I find out later that he doesn't even think he should be assigned any blame for it..)
- There is two pieces of end vinyl siding cap and 1 piece of drip edge to complete the job, and due to the earlier issues, I decide there is no way I am paying the final payment on the job until those are done. For the next 3 weeks I call at least twice a week leaving messages like 'I'd like to get that roof completed so I can pay you and close out the project' which go unanswered. Again, I hit up my friend to find out what is up, and they finally get the job completed. HOWEVER, during about this 4 week period, my mother in law passes away, and her assets and everything are now locked in probate until my wife is appointed as temp executrix of property and assets. (Not to mention the hardship that my wife is going through)
- For the last 3-4 weeks, we have been waiting for that to come in, and have not paid the bills for her estate due to such, and I have been arguing with the contractor about the final payment. I finally got our attorney to agree that it is ok for me to pay the contractor from my personal account, in hopes that I can get that back from the assets before they are distributed.
- Your correct, it was well over 2 months from agreement to completion for a tiny ranch roof with disaster of a water stain in the middle and weeks to complete something that would have taken a reputable crew probably 2 days to do.
This total rehab project took over 11 months from start to finish, and was by FAR way to long due to these issues like above, and has probably cost us thousands of dollars extra due to length of time, cost overruns, poor workmanship, etc.
I think # 3 above has been our biggest issue, I should have gone with more reputable contractors with signed contracts, better dates and project time lines. I think that this would have alleviated a lot of the headaches in total.
Hopefully my posting (rant) will be able to give some new rehabber's some insight and avoid some of these things. Most of them I have seen repeated by many people over the years, and you still can get tripped by the same issues. The person that did the work above still thinks he has done nothing wrong, we've argued about it based on the delay in the estate paying him, and I will probably never talk with them again. That's too bad, as I don't like to have poor relationships out there, but it would also be a mistake to wallow in those bad relationships I feel..
That's one project story, on the plus side, it's under contract now, but for about 20k less than we had hoped for, but we (and my wife) will finally be able to move on..
Home: 3 bed 1 bath 900 square foot single story ranch, nothing special for this area, a standard small ranch style 'starter' type home. Built in 1960, but poorly maintained, needed full rehab, new kitchen, walls, bathroom redone, etc.
We needed to keep costs down, but do quite a bit of work, and I wanted to highlight some things for people that we ran across, so maybe on your first rehabs you don't run into the same issue..
1- We waited until selling the house and to have the buyer do the inspection. This was a mistake, we should have brought in a house inspector ourselves to point out the problems that were going to get flagged by ANY house inspector, and fixed them first. They will find things you don't see if your not a house inspector/builder/contractor yourself, and would save the trouble of having a buyer get to see these first!
2- Duration - everything seems to take longer than anticipated, as you will run into things that couldn't be known at the beginning, or just were not thought of. In addition, a missed milestone or time line in your plan can cascade into scheduling nightmare with other contractors. For example, a missed deadline for installing electrical work and plumbing caused delay in Insulation being put in, which then caused scheduling shuffle with those teams, and then had to postpone wallboard and plaster, which in turn pushed out the painting teams, etc, etc.. This takes a lot more effort and timing to coordinate as you would hope, as the contractor has other jobs they have to work/schedule as well. Probably can't overstate the importance here...
3- Contractors - the old adage you get what you pay for applies here. A LOT. I used some referrals from friends and acquaintances on this in hopes to keep the costs down, as my elderly mother in law did not have a lot of money on hand for this. This is the biggest of the headaches, not returning phone calls, showing up weeks after they are supposed to, poor quality work, not adhering to code requirements... I can go on and on here but can't imagine doing things this way again. Let me give you an example that has now ended my acquaintance with said persons, which is too bad, as they are friends of my friend and I will be seeing this person around in the future. I just don't care to even acknowledge him any more.
(Sorry, this is also a bit of a rant below, but if it helps one of you to keep away from this type of issue, at least that will be some good out of it...)
- One of the last things we found we needed to do was replace the roof (Another mistake, we should have done this FIRST) Got a decent quote, and accepted, I know they can do the work, as I have seen some of his other work.
- 4 weeks later, after repeated unanswered phone calls, and supposed 'scheduling conflicts', finally roof work starts. This is after complaints all along before we agreed to job about how contractor was desperate for work and money.
- half of roof is completed in a weekend after some difficult removal of old roofing. This is good, and I acknowledge the extra effort that it took.
- Two more weeks of no work, no phone answering, and I finally get my friend to contact the person to get the other half done! Another week later, the other half is stripped and progressing. I get an update that some extra materials are needed, and he'll be finishing up. I think Finally! but after a week I go over to check the house to find that part of the roof is stripped and was only covered with a tarp, and left like that for well over a week.. I walked into the living room that was new, new plaster, and already primed to find a 12 foot water stain along the seams from the rains we had over a couple of days during that week. :bgh: I inform the worker, and finally get the roof mostly completed by the end of the next week. I eat this mistake of his, as I know he'll never get it fixed. (I find out later that he doesn't even think he should be assigned any blame for it..)
- There is two pieces of end vinyl siding cap and 1 piece of drip edge to complete the job, and due to the earlier issues, I decide there is no way I am paying the final payment on the job until those are done. For the next 3 weeks I call at least twice a week leaving messages like 'I'd like to get that roof completed so I can pay you and close out the project' which go unanswered. Again, I hit up my friend to find out what is up, and they finally get the job completed. HOWEVER, during about this 4 week period, my mother in law passes away, and her assets and everything are now locked in probate until my wife is appointed as temp executrix of property and assets. (Not to mention the hardship that my wife is going through)
- For the last 3-4 weeks, we have been waiting for that to come in, and have not paid the bills for her estate due to such, and I have been arguing with the contractor about the final payment. I finally got our attorney to agree that it is ok for me to pay the contractor from my personal account, in hopes that I can get that back from the assets before they are distributed.
- Your correct, it was well over 2 months from agreement to completion for a tiny ranch roof with disaster of a water stain in the middle and weeks to complete something that would have taken a reputable crew probably 2 days to do.
This total rehab project took over 11 months from start to finish, and was by FAR way to long due to these issues like above, and has probably cost us thousands of dollars extra due to length of time, cost overruns, poor workmanship, etc.
I think # 3 above has been our biggest issue, I should have gone with more reputable contractors with signed contracts, better dates and project time lines. I think that this would have alleviated a lot of the headaches in total.
Hopefully my posting (rant) will be able to give some new rehabber's some insight and avoid some of these things. Most of them I have seen repeated by many people over the years, and you still can get tripped by the same issues. The person that did the work above still thinks he has done nothing wrong, we've argued about it based on the delay in the estate paying him, and I will probably never talk with them again. That's too bad, as I don't like to have poor relationships out there, but it would also be a mistake to wallow in those bad relationships I feel..
That's one project story, on the plus side, it's under contract now, but for about 20k less than we had hoped for, but we (and my wife) will finally be able to move on..
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