Video: Five Steps Before Remodeling

SAN JOSE — Host, Sarah Rutan: When remodeling your home, its important to plan ahead. Today, we’re in San Jose with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Jim Kabel of Next Stage Design & Build to learn five steps to consider before beginning a project.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Jim Kabel: When considering doing a large remodeling project or anything that’s design-intensive, here are five steps that I think are important for you to think about, or five key points, actually.

Number one is get a clear definition of your scope. As you’re starting to interview potential companies that you’re going to be working with, having a clear idea of what you’re going to be doing, what’s included, what’s not included, what aspects you plan to keep, what aspects you plan to change are going to be very important to help you get a good budgetary idea of what the project’s going to cost.

Number two, get a sense of what your style is. Understand the architecture of your home. Get a good sense of what types of projects are of interest to you based on websites you’ve visited, magazines you’ve looked through. You may not have to understand all the different types of styles, but if you can get a clear idea of what you like and don’t like and communicate that, that’s extremely helpful.

Third, get the structural details defined as early as possible. If you plan to open up walls, move walls, bump out space, change the size of doors and windows, those are all things that can consume your budget very quickly and it’s important to nail those down up front so you can manage the rest of your budget properly.

Fourth, when you actually move forward with the project, get everything documented in great detail. Make sure that there are drawings that spell out everything specifically. Make sure you have a contract that supports those drawings that spells out all the terms, all of the other nuances that are important in this project as it goes forward.

And then fifth, choose the right partner. Find a company that you trust. Find somebody that you’re comfortable working with. You’re going to have this working relationship going on for an extended period of time, both before, during, and after the project and you want to hire somebody that you trust and that you feel comfortable with.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.