A&A Reno Experience

[a0743028w 1]

Hi Homeowners,

We recently renovated our family home (a landed property) and it was a nightmarish experience.  We appointed a contractor who was introduced to us, but ultimately turned out to most unscrupulous, keeps dragging on work delivery and even told us he wouldn't want to do the job after taking 50% of deposit.  Ultimately we overpaid him, had to hire a lawyer to terminate so another contractor could take over to finish the project that was 90% completed.   

My advice is to get a proper legal contract done up as the common contract or proposals given will hardly cover the owner should something go wrong.  Engage a professional to oversee the project with proper build schedule and money disbursement schedule.  It may seem expensive at the onset but I think it is all worth it.  We went over budget by a lot of money due to the appointment of a wrong contractor.  Happy to share the name of this company as I hope no one else would meet with the same unfortunate situation like us.  

 

[nerrad 7]

Yes...

[sillbeers15 7]

I drafted a contract as detailed as possible listing down materials, size and period of construction and gotten my contractor to sign before first payment.

I did not engage a project manager as my Reconstruction project did not exceed $800k on my 4000sqft semi-d (added 3rd level on existing 2 storey) as I did not see the worth since my total project cost did not exceed $1m.

I was glad I did the contract as I went into construction phase a few months down the road and neither my contractor or I can remember well what was agreed verbally in the beginning, to avoid unnecessary disagreements and confusion, the contract was recalled several times and my contractor could not disagree with my requirements.

Most obvious was the duration of built, in the contract was 9 mths provided by my contractor. Actual TOP came after 18 mths. I managed to clawback some of the $10k per month delay penalty stated in my contract ( I did not wanted to ask for full sum due to the good works provided by my contractor and the reasonable timeline of 9mths seem too tight).   

[Sim Ker Sing 0]

Many contractors are not diligent enough to take down notes of site discussions or keep a site record of matters raised and materials confirmed.  Some good contractors actually follow up with sketches to confirm with the owners if they had interpreted their intentions correctly.   Personally, when I do a small project with a Client, we have a common jotter book placed on site to record all our discussions / sketches.  Any dispute, we will refer back to "the jotter book".  For construction, a picture says a thousand words.  I find this method extremely useful as changes due to site constraints, design refinement or any other reason are recorded for small renovation and A&A projects.  Of course, for bigger projects, there will be memos, confirmation of verbal instruction etc documentation for project contract administration. 

[sillbeers15 7]

When home owners want to save money, they must be prepared to be involved in the project and follow through. Most importantly, homeowners must do homework and decide on what they want instead of not knowing what they want.

For information, I sketched the interior, exterior floor plan to scale and 3D perspective drawing for the contractor to translate into building plan and worked with them on where to position pillars before the built. I also provided the lighting points, power supply points, internet LAN points, TV cable points, garden lighting & exterior lighting locations, air-conditioning compressor locations, plumbing route specifically to my contractor. I'm not professionally in the trade, but was active enough to do daily site visits. Once the construction progress found not according to plan, I strictly ask for the work to be removed and redone.