Top 5 Tips for Picking a Contractor
You’ve finally decided to give your kitchen that makeover it deserves. Great! So who will you task with making your favourite room in the house the best it can be? Here are 5 tips for selecting the perfect contractor:
1) Where to Look: First off, check with friends, family or neighbours who have had a good remodelling experience. Also, if you’re buying a home, your real estate broker should have many contractor contacts. Talk to at least 3 before you make a final decision.
2) Questions to Ask: There are several questions you should make sure to ask when interviewing each contractor. Find out how long they have been in business. Also, see how long they estimate your renovation will take. Find out what size job they prefer to work on. Ask for references, and, if possible, visit their previous jobs.
3) Credentials: Make sure that the contractor(s) you are interested in hiring are properly licensed and insured on the provincial and local levels.
4) Get Quotes: To get an accurate quote, be as explicit as possible about what you want done. And try to remember that the lowest quote is not necessarily the way to go.
5) Be Green: It’s all about the environment! Find out if your prospective contractors have reduced quantities of materials that they use, if they recycle their waste and if they securely seal off work environments.
We hope you find these tips useful. Do you have any tips for how to find a contractor? Share with us below!
7 comments
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Laurie: The timeline is key, as you surmised. Those shows on TV are *terrible* because it looks like things happen overnight. I set a five-week timeline and was wildly aggressive about keeping everyone on track, even to the point of hopping in my truck and driving two hours each way to get a hard-to-find component so that my electrical contractor could keep working instead of playing fetch. It's also helpful to the timeline if you do as much work yourself as you can - demolition, painting, etc - while you leave the stuff that needs specialty skills - granite, woodworking, electrical, HVAC, etc - to your contractors. Otherwise you end up at the mercy of everyone else, and if ONE thing slips for even one day, it pushes everything else back. Five weeks is probably as quickly as you can to a complete tearout and rebuild. If anyone tells you anything less, they are either dreaming or have an army of television elves to come in and do it in the middle of the night. -
Contractors? You mean there are people out there who will come and complete a job FOR you? LOL! When it comes to a kitchen reno one big question I would get clear right away is how long will my kitchen be out of commission. Also, it would be very important to assess this answer carefully, because just because someone is willing to tell you what you'd like to hear doesn't mean they have a plan to make it happen :) -
Cough cough we really REALLY need to see pics of your Hobbit hole kitchen now. Just saying.
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Hi, this comment isn't really about a contractor, per say. I tried to hire some building "contractors' to add some space to my broom closet, I mean Kitchen.
First I called the Hobbits, but they're feet were too big for the space.
So I tried the next best thing, The Keeblers Elves, figuring they should be be able to fit 2 of them in there. But I digress, when they realized they only had room to bake one cookie at a time, they quit on me.
They were very kind though and said that if I ever was lucky enough to get a bigger kitchen they could actually work in, they would happily come back and do my Christmas baking. Which would be a wonderful treat, because Christmas dinner in my kitchen, consists of sliced turkey from the deli, and a pumpin pie from the corner bakery. -
You have to keep an eye on the green-ness factor, though. Contractors will tell you they are diverting waste, and they DO divert out metal and hazardous/toxic items ... but then you still find their paper coffee cups (compostable) and cardboard boxes (recyclable) in the dumpster bin.
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What a great suggestion, Mark! Side-by-side comparisons are priceless and so important. And it's so great to hear that contractors are being green now. This is definitely a decision that takes as much time as planning out all the exciting new appliances you want to get! -
One thing I would add is to make a chart of EVERY service or task that each contractor offers, and then compare side by side. Who is offering items that the others dont? Who included a service that you didn't think of when you were planning (a good example is duct cleaning - you HAVE to get it done when the job is complete, but only a few contractors include it in their estimate)? Even small items like "daily broom and vacuum cleaning at the end of day" can make a small difference in the total cost but a HUGE difference in your quality of life during the reno. An item-by-item and side-by-side comparison of the estimates can REALLY tell you a lot!
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