Remodeling a home in Houston is filled with many delays including material back orders, labor crews not available when needed and of course weather.

You may not be able to manage your way out of every progress delay, but we have some sound recommendations for you to reduce the likelihood of them occurring regularly.

As well, if the major delays strike your remodel, we have some very constructive suggestions on what to do to get your remodeling a home project back on track.

Remodeling a home is so exciting at first. You can visualize what your new remodeling project is going to look like when it is complete.

You have carefully vetted your design team and your remodel contractor.  All along scrimping and saving to put the money aside for this much anticipated remodel.

The hours of research have piled up preparing for this major event in your life. You have prepared your well thought through questions for the remodeling contractor interviewing process and you are prepared to select your team and get this project started.

Flash forward, a 3-month project has turned into 6 months and you’re not even half way finished. What went wrong? More importantly, what do you do now…

Planning and Setting the Proper Expectations

Let’s roll the tape back and determine the possible steps or events that caused the wheels to come off the cart.

We all have preconceived ideas and expectations before we immerse ourselves into the details of subject matter articles and listen to our friends’ stories of their own personal adventures with a remodeling project.

You may even have had formed your own perceptions based on some previous remodel or some family of friends past home remodeling experiences in Houston.

In any event, most everyone has some fairly strong opinions before even starting remodeling a home.

This is not always a bad thing. It’s good to have a heads up that your dream remodel can quickly become a nightmare.

But it is very important to approach each project and all interested parties with an open mind and a reasonable sense of skepticism.

That is to say if you approach your design and remodeler team candidates during the interviewing process as experts sharing their knowledge and opinions, this process will only help form and shape a better project for you.

Share some of the opinions and facts that you heard from one remodel contractor with his rival. Your goal at this phase of the remodel is not to be an expert but rather absorb as much content as possible and to shake it up a little.

Determining which remodeling contractors are like minded and collect a general consensus on the difficult and challenging aspects of your project.

Develop Complete Construction Documents and Scope of Work

During your discussions with prospective remodeling contractors, it is necessary to have the home designer create a complete set of construction documents.

These would include architectural plans, an as-built plan of existing layout, elevation renderings of kitchen and bathroom casework, detailed wall sections, clear demolition plans and most importantly a detailed scope of work.