Hiring The Right Kitchen Remodeler For Your Project

How do you hire the right remodelers? This is a very hard question to answer. If you do an internet search for remodelers in your area (such as looking for a kitchen remodeler in a specific location such as Wayne PA), your computer screen will be populated with results. In this sea of potential remodelers in your area, how do you know which one is reliable? Should you print out a sheet and randomly pick out one? Should you call 100 people and interview each one to assess who you like the best? With any remodeling project, hiring the right remodeler is essential. Throughout this article, we will give you steps and pointers to make sure you hire the right remodeler for your job.

The best way to hire a remodeler is to ask your friends and family who they used and if they were happy with their work. This is the best way to assess a remodeler and how they will perform in your house without actually hiring them. Remember to ask questions like is there anything you would do different and what were their strengths and weaknesses. And, the advantage of asking your friends and family is that you can actually go to their kitchen and assess the job the contractor did. You may have different standards of quality then the people you know. What they are unhappy with, you may be thrilled with and vice versa. And, knowing what other people paid for their remodel is great. Many times, when contractors are slow, they will charge less so during the contractor interview process and after an estimate is received, you can compare your estimate to your friends estimate to see if you are getting a fair market price for the remodel job.

If you don't have any friends who recently remodeled their kitchens (or you don't have any friends), then you need to move to stage two of how to hire the right remodeler, which involves the interview process. This takes us back to square one, the dreaded internet search, or, for those less technically savvy, the even more dreaded telephone book search. Put in your local area into your favorite search engine coupled with the words "kitchen remodeler" or "bathroom remodeler", basically whatever room in your house you are looking to remodel. We are putting a lot of trust in search engines at this point that they will return results relevant to your area. After you have results, we recommend picking at least 5 contractors which means 3-5 estimates depending on who calls you back.

Once you have spoken to the remodelers and you have scheduled your appointments for them to discuss designs and take estimates of your room, there are a few things to remember to do. First, and most importantly, make sure whoever you hire will not subcontract the job out. You want the person coming to your house to sell being the same person that works in your house. Communication is very important in the remodeling industry. If you have any problems or concerns, it is a great feeling to have the person you already met and have a relationship with on the job to discuss problems or even suggestions as they arise. If your remodeler is sub contracting work out to people you have never met, chances are they will not perform as well as the master builder whom you initially met.

If they answer "yes" to the subcontractor question, follow up with the phrase, "thank you for your time, we'll be in touch" which is code for we are not interested. If they don't sub contract out, then it's time for stage three. This means asking the contractor for references, requesting an estimate, and getting the design plan. While the contractor is working on your design plan, call the names they provide you to get a feel for the kind of work the remodelers do and have done. If the homeowner will let you come to their house and assess the work, by all means do so. It may feel a bit awkward, but if you are willing to spend $50,000 on a remodel, taking a drive to check out a stranger's home isn't that hard of a pill to swallow.

Once you have called the testimonials and everything is good, just wait for their design and their estimate. One a side note, don't put too much stock into the rendering that the contractors give you. Sometimes, contractors are not expert artistic enough to draw a perfect picture of your future kitchen, but are master craftsmen. You should be basing your decision on price, customer feedback, and your relationship with the contractor. On top of it all, don't forget to trust your intuition, if everything else is a dead heat between feedback, price, and communication, trust your instincts and go with the contractor you feel will do the best job.

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