Renovation Reveal and Advice
Hello all I thought I might share with you the (almost) culmination of a brownstone gut renovation I embarked on 20 months ago. Having a background in design I drew the plans myself and designed the house entirely, which was the easy part… I consulted this forum as well as other sources for GC recommendations…
Hello all
I thought I might share with you the (almost) culmination of a brownstone gut renovation I embarked on 20 months ago. Having a background in design I drew the plans myself and designed the house entirely, which was the easy part… I consulted this forum as well as other sources for GC recommendations and did as much research as I thought I needed to, but still ended up choosing the wrong GC, who pretended to know more then he did, made a lot of mistakes and cut corners (many of them I only found out about after I fired him) and stopped showing up to work when he finished spending most of the money.
I luckily found a wonderful new GC who saved me and helped me complete the 4 story renovation.
I now live in the duplex apartment, comprising of the basement and first floor of the house, while the second and third floors each are 1 bedroom tenant’s apartments. The duplex is almost finished (I am still fixing problems the first GC left me with), but the rentals are complete and are rented out to lovely tenants. I would be happy to lend advice to any of you out there who are contemplating a gut renovation, as I have learned so much about construction through this process and what to watch out for. I can also recommend some good people. To see the complete work as it stand now you can visit my web showcase:
https://sites.google.com/site/spacedesignproject/
Thank you grand army.
Hey folks, House pride is real and it’s nothing to be ashamed of! I organize one of the house tours and knows how much pleasure it gives people — whether they own or rent — to see inside these homes, talk design details, talk technical aspects, talk neighborhood history etc etc. Personally, I see many things to admire about spacedesign’s reno. And I appraciate his (her?) willingness to offer feedback about the process and pass on recommendations. Haters out there: grab a strong drink tonight and try to ease up on the scorn a little!
someone asked about the fridge: its Fisher Paykel
http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/E522BLE.html
overall great work. I just love the doors. the struck me right away, simply amazing. the floors are beutifull as well. dont get yourself upset over silly comments. everyone has their own taste and own opinion – they just don’t know how to share it with others without putting somebody down.
to slopefarm:
I have a full time job, and I got a few offers to design already from people who visited my house and like the style so I’m good on that front. This was not an ad, or I wouldn’t tell here about mistakes that I made. I genuinely wanted to share my experience and help others not to make the same mistakes that I did with my first big job. If this was an ad I would never have admitted mistakes and just said everything was great.
I didn’t know this website is supposed to be snarky; I came here Previously for advice, got some inspiration from other people’s work, and had always gotten helpful advice from people here. I guess I didn’t come across CMU and Dicks before. I definitely disagree with CMU know-it-all-decks+stairs-there-is-only-one-way-to-design-a-brownstone dogmatic opinion, but I don’t think his attitude is worth it to try and debate this point and I don’t think he really is interested to debate anything.
4. Walk around the site and question everything, even if it aggravates your GC. If you are not satisfied with his answers and you have growing concerns about something, bring another GC when he is not there, to just give you an opinion about what is going on. They will do it.
5. Try to have as much control on the money. Do not hand out large amounts of money. ONLY PAY IN STAGES AND ONLY AFTER THE WORK ON EACH STAGE IS COMPLETE AND YOU HAVE INSPECTED THE SMALL DETAILS OF IT.
6. Do not trust your gut. People can be deceiving. Trust your common sense, and do not be afraid to stop everything and fire someone. It’s scary, but if you have reasonable doubt, do it, and the sooner the better.
7. When the walls are still open and the pipes are up, literally touch and inspect strength, the soldering work and the type of pipes that are used. This is the biggest favor you can do for yourself. Otherwise you might find yourself opening some walls, like me.
8. Insist that the architect come and inspect things for you at every stage.
9. If you see sloppy work, un-neat work, or the site itself is messy ( things thrown about, etc) and the contractor tells you that it will be better when its finished, that he will fix it, its not a big deal etc- its probably not going to happen. A worksite should be in order and clean and every stage should be done neatly and properly. If any stage is done sloppy the whole thing is going to look sloppy, and it will be very difficult to fix later.
Cost: I’m not comfortable posting here what it cost me but if you email me directly I can be more specific. Suffice to say that anyone who thinks they can do a gut reno of quality with less then 300,000 in reserve is going to get into a lot of trouble, and end up paying more then that, or lose their house. I met at least two people this happened to. They tried to get things cheap and ended up losing the place because fixing the problems was too expensive. I avoided that, but I would urge anyone who gets too good to be true estimates to think again. Labor, good labor, people who take pride in their job and make sure its done correctly cost money. Of course there are people who overcharge and you should definitely shop around. But too cheap a labor means trouble. Means all they want is the pay at the end of the day and they don’t care what they leave behind. I actually did save a lot on the architect fees because I did my own planning and on the materials and fixtures because I researched and found everything I wanted for a lot less then identical but overpriced counterparts. But mortgage payments do take a bite, and mistakes to fix cost too.
I finished the apartments first, and had them rented out. I then began slowly to fix my apartment, where most of the problems were. Most of it is finished now, and I am close to completion.
Filing: everything was filed. I have passed all my inspections. Dealing with the building department is a whole other novel, I won’t get into it right now, but you have to have nerves of steel and patience to deal with these people.
To Homey:
“what you think your big mistakes wereâ€
I tried to answer that in my reply to Cobblekrill. I hope it helps.
“how long did you think it would have taken you if you’d had the good GC all along?â€
I think it would have taken 8-10 months minimum.
Did you have to replace all the mechanicals or level the floors?
The beams were good for the most part. My first GC claimed he leveled the floor “as best he could for the money he had’ I don’t know what that means. All I know is that there are places where the floor is not level and it caused many problems with the framing, doors and tiles.
“Who do you recommend for tile, etc.†– actually the tile guy we used has past away. He was only 40 years old mind you but anyways I don’t really know anyone off hand to recommend for tiling, sorry. I’m sure my current GC has someone else he uses.
“And did use an architect or engineer along the way to submit plans, etc.?â€
yes I used an architect who filed everything. I did a lot of going to the DOB myself though, to speed things along.
RESPONSES:
TO denton:
The glass doors, are double pane. The glass pane itself actually open up with loosening of two screws so it can be cleaned from both sides. there is some insulation around the iron frame, but still some cold air does come in, not through the pane, through the frame. So far it hasn’t been too much of a problem, but next year I might look into perhaps adding some more protection.
And did you build that concrete wall in the backyard?
Yes I did. its cinder block, with stucco.
Thank you to: witchdoctor,halkaps,Johnny,jewel,11217,gemini10,pickles,Cobblekrill
to halkaps: its henry moore paint, I believe it was ‘Bamboo Shoot’
to Cobblekrill :
This is the story of the GC and my mistakes:
The first CG I hired was recommended to me by another tradesman who worked with him before and thought he was good. I talked to his previous customers, who said they were happy with his work on their apartment. I went to see another job he did for a business, and it looked good. He was younger then most of the GC’s I interviewed and wasn’t so resisting to some of the things I wanted to do ( some GC’s only like to do what they know, and if for example you mention the word ‘radiant heat’ they get this tragic look on their faces and try immediately to dissuade you. I ended up doing it, and after fixing the problems caused by the first GC, its working great, heats like a beast, and the energy bills are way low. . So anyways, I decided to go with the younger, open minded guy, who came with excellent recommendations, and who told me he was confident he could execute the job without any problems, for the budget that I had. The agreement was, I was responsible for some of the work (I brought my own electrician, and took care of all the fixtures), and he would supervise the work and execute all the rest, making sure all is done correctly and managing the site. We sat down many times planning the budget according to his estimates and the fixtures and materials that I priced. Sounds good so far. However, I found out that there is a lot more then that to construction. You have to actually know how to coordinate the different tradesmen, and how to time correctly, what part of the construction needs to go before what, how to control quality and the delicate job of not paying the workmen until the work is satisfactory not just pay them at the end of the week and then discover they were sloppy and trying to get them to come back and do it over correctly. That’s just some of it. This guy I hired, in fact, had only very limited experience and tried to pass off like he knew what he was doing when he didn’t have a clue how to manage a job this big. Of course early on I sensed things weren’t going well but whenever I raised concerns, he kept reassuring me everything would be ok, and that I’m stressing out over nothing. When you are in a situation where your money and your home is on the line, it’s hard to admit to oneself that you may have made a terrible mistake and that your GC is incompetent. It’s easier to believe him when he keeps reassuring you with a sincere and confident manner. You start doubting yourself, and not knowing what to do. Should I have terminated him earlier? sure. But I will never ever make this mistake again. Only later, when the other GC came in, I discovered the plumbing mistakes that were made (in structure as well as plain bad work that caused many leaks) the fact that a lot of his framing was not straight (hard to see when you’re not an expert in framing until the sheet rock goes on), and that he built one room in the wrong measurements and not according to the plans. These are some of the issues he had left me to deal with. Eventually my concerns grew and I realized if I don’t stop this immediately I will be in big trouble, and I let him go and began searching for someone else to finish the job. I had to borrow more money in order to finish and the time wasted meant that I had to pay mortgage for much longer then I anticipated, without the help from rental income. Luckily I found another GC who agreed to take the job over even thought it meant that he had to fix someone else’s problems, and deal with unexpected surprises. He is great and thought me a lot about construction and the right way of doing things. Long story short, my first GC had no idea how to manage a project of this scale and he went to school on my time and money, not to mention aggravation.
He had recently apologized to me over the phone for undertaking the project in the first place, knowing he was not as qualified, but refused of course to give me any money back, so little good did the apology do me. Having said all that, most of the mistakes he did were able to be corrected. Some were too expensive to correct and I had to find a compromise between what I wanted and what I could afford at that point and work around it. All in all it could have been a lot worse. I could have waited longer to get rid of him, or found out about the problems way too late to fix.
What I learned from this:
1. Make sure your GC had at least 15-20 years experience.
2. make sure he actually went to school for this, and knows about construction from all angles.
3. Do a more rigorous checking with as many former clients as possible.
4. Walk around the site and question everything, even if it aggravates your GC. If you
Thanks Space Design. Appreciate the referral! Love your floors btw!
I’d agree with you, slopefarm except for the fact that CMU and BOD consistently are trash talkers on this website.
I think this site has gone downhill big time lately, personally.
Everyone who posts their reno is saying look at me in a way. Perhaps it’s done in a more subtle manner, but it sounds like the OP may be from another country (perhaps?) and the language issue made it a bit more direct.
I don’t know…I still think jumping on someone with a barrage of over the top negative comments is rude.