Remodel Process

We’re starting to think about remodeling our home (currently a 4 story, 2 family brownstone where each apartment is a duplex – 2 bedrooms rooms are on the garden floor, a kitchen, living and dining on the parlor for 1 duplex. The other duplex has living dining kitchen on the 3rd floor of brownstone with two bedrooms on the 4th floor – we’d like to convert to a triplex over a garden unit). Aside from the layout of the house, we’d also likely move around some plumbing (to create an additional bathroom or two) and move / remove walls.

We’re very new to remodeling so are unsure who we’ll need to hire. Will we need a structural engineer, architect, designer AND a general contractor? Or would a designer provide all of these services?

Any help / guidance on where to start would be tremendously appreciated.

Having done something similar recently, can confirm it’s a long and painful process at times. We had the best team and it still had many hiccups. I would start with an architect who knows Brooklyn townhouses and go from there to get an idea of what is possible and scope. He/she will tell you whether you need an engineer(s), expeditor, etc. I would also hire a designer from the beginning if you have the cash to think about how you’re actually going to live in the house and to help you figure out materials, etc. They will probably pay for themselves via discounts on finishes.

a few things I learned:

Assume from the beginning this will cost 250/sq ft. at least, probably 300. Could be more, could be less, but don’t cheap out. Shrink the scope if you don’t have the budget (like keep the duplex layout and just update… you might run into alt-co issues, which has tons of implications).

If you’re installing ducted hvac, hire an MEP engineer to design the system, before you get GC approvals from the DOB and start work. It will save you so much stress later on knowing where all the registers are going.

If you want a deck off the parlor floor. It’s worth it but it’s so so expensive.

Pay for 3/4 drywall everywhere (assuming you’re not doing plaster) and fill all your INTERIOR walls with mineral wool. Pay for at least 3/4 solid wood doors (high quality MDF rail and stile is fine too though some on here will disagree). If you’re gutting, have a professional do a proper insulation of all the exterior walls as well with vapor barrier as needed. This all will ensure your home is quiet and we’ll insulated.

Be honest with yourself about what is a must have and a nice to have. Some nice to haves (like smart switches) add up very fast if you need a lot of them and may not be worth it.

Start with the building envelope (roof, facade, cellar, windows) and work in. There’s no point in spending $$$$ on new wood floors and finishes on your top floor if you have an ancient roof that’s going to leak in a year. If money is a factor, Do the envelope now and wait a few years for the rest.

Specify exactly what you want in writing, every detail. Don’t assume. Your designers should be able to walk you through these decisions.

I have so many more but Theres enough here to start!

Having done something similar recently, can confirm it’s a long and painful process at times. We had the best team and it still had many hiccups. I would start with an architect who knows Brooklyn townhouses and go from there to get an idea of what is possible and scope. He/she will tell you whether you need an engineer(s), expeditor, etc. I would also hire a designer from the beginning if you have the cash to think about how you’re actually going to live in the house and to help you figure out materials, etc. They will probably pay for themselves via discounts on finishes.

a few things I learned:

Assume from the beginning this will cost 250/sq ft. at least, probably 300. Could be more, could be less, but don’t cheap out. Shrink the scope if you don’t have the budget (like keep the duplex layout and just update… you might run into alt-co issues, which has tons of implications).

If you’re installing ducted hvac, hire an MEP engineer to design the system, before you get GC approvals from the DOB and start work. It will save you so much stress later on knowing where all the registers are going.

If you want a deck off the parlor floor. It’s worth it but it’s so so expensive.

Pay for 3/4 drywall everywhere (assuming you’re not doing plaster) and fill all your INTERIOR walls with mineral wool. Pay for at least 3/4 solid wood doors (high quality MDF rail and stile is fine too though some on here will disagree). If you’re gutting, have a professional do a proper insulation of all the exterior walls as well with vapor barrier as needed. This all will ensure your home is quiet and we’ll insulated.

Be honest with yourself about what is a must have and a nice to have. Some nice to haves (like smart switches) add up very fast if you need a lot of them and may not be worth it.

Start with the building envelope (roof, facade, cellar, windows) and work in. There’s no point in spending $$$$ on new wood floors and finishes on your top floor if you have an ancient roof that’s going to leak in a year. If money is a factor, Do the envelope now and wait a few years for the rest.

Specify exactly what you want in writing, every detail. Don’t assume. Your designers should be able to walk you through these decisions.

I have so many more but Theres enough here to start!

Thank you! Thankfully some of these are in a good spot for us (roof, deck, facade, windows) but can imagine it’ll still be a huge job nonetheless. You mentioned you worked with a great team. Would love any recommendations you could share for architect / GC / designer / engineer.

Op, what I am about to say is long but I am about to offer perspective that few people on this board have and some people wish they had had and some people will wish they had never heard. Those who like to defer responsibility and those who have been burned by the system I am about to describe, do not want to talk about this because what I am about to say makes the ULTIMATE selection of contractors (especially when using a ”bid” system) the responsibility of the homeowner, even when the contractor “screws up”. Understand, when using a “bid” system to select contractors, red flags often appear but people fail to heed them because they are seduced by a low price (the red flags can be any number of warnings that one would look at when judging the character and integrity of anyone we meet; you will be working closely with contractors; judge them as if you have to share a cubicle with them or you are hiring them to work on your team at the office). As it is, I do not like the word “bid” because when used by homeowners it often implies the cheapest price. When used by re al estate and construction industry professionals, it means the “safest” price and the safest price is NEVER the lowest price. What follows is long winded only because as I make my case, i can cite true examples, one reaching back to about 1980, as I attempt to convey to you and others what can and will go wrong when a bid system is used improperly.

It has taken me something like forty years of working in this industry and ten years of watching nightmares unfold on this board to understand what was going wrong when major jobs fell apart for homeowners. When it happens once to a homeowner, most of them assume that a contractor made a mistake or was a crook (it can happen because a contractor is less experienced, overlooked something, or is a crook; usually it is the contractor’s “fault” but unknowing homeowners “allow” it to happen). When it happens to the same person several times over decades and they fail to see a pattern, they simply say “all contractors are ‘crooks’” and think these contractors keep “screwing” them. what they do not understand is; even though they used a “bidding” process to select the contractors, the bidding process is not without flaws and depending on the quality of the contractors working in that environment and how the customer uses the bids, the system can be downright misleading.

Here is the problem: Contractors know they are often bidding against others (this is the free market and that market protects the customer while making it harder for contractors, especially if we are bidding against actual crooked contractors; that is why contractors hate crooks and cheats) and because of this contractors are often under intense pressure to submit a bid lower than they might be comfortable with (I do not fall for this, I tell customers “If you are using bids to select the lowest price, I am not interested; I want you to hire me because I do the best work”). Less experienced and/or shady contractors who need the work and might have trouble getting jobs because they look or sound less than desirable often know they are bidding against others who have a better chance at getting the job so they will often rely on short cuts (shoddy work) to save money in order to produce a more attractive price. Often, after the job has begun, some of these people go back to the customer with their hand out looking for more money; others wait until the end of the job and as they are fighting with the customer because money is getting tighter, they will abandon it; this is what often happens when people say “contractors are crooks”.

Before I continue to support what I am saying with some real life examples, let me back up a little:

Whenever we do anything in these houses, ANYTHING AT ALL, it ALWAYS grows into something else. when we open a wall to fix one thing, it grows into a job requiring three trades. sometimes unexpected things come up but experienced contractors KNOW what those things are before they begin opening walls and it is our job as contractors to tell you “if we do that, we will have to do that and that as well and we will need … (pick your trade & amount of additional money). If you bring someone in who has not been through a lot of whatever it is they do, they will not have the foresight to see the problems and either prepare contingencies (money built into the quote) or be in a position to advise the customer. Some less than honest contractors may actually know something and may NOT convey it at the onset because they need a job and figure the customer will have no choice but to cough up more money after the job has begun (you read it here, sometimes when this happens, it is not a mistake, is their modus operendi).

WE (contractors) are only people. Many of us have little in the way of formal education beyond high school and often work without industry related classroom training and no training in such things as finance (the writer of this has a BA, some master’s work, and a certificate in Building Management but has NOT taken ONE finance, budgeting, or accounting class). Keep something in mind, we hear about people with MBA’s from the best universities getting themselves in financial trouble all the time; contractors are just as capable of getting in trouble if not more so. WE are humans and we can and do make mistakes (contractors will not admit this when selling jobs; I am admitting this now because at 58 years old, most of this is behind me). We are not magicians; if the money is not there, the money is not there:

Some time ago someone was on this forum saying that their contractor had left a $20k line out of a quote and notified them of this after he had started the job; the homeowner was conflicted; they were decent enough to think of the contractor and felt he deserved the money but also felt that it was his mistake and therefore his responsibility. as it was, by some things the customer said, i suspected the customer had chosen what was the lowest “bid” (I asked and the customer confirmed). This is the thing about the lowest bid; IT IS ALREADY “SUSPECT” – in other words, the only reason the lowest bid was the lowest was because something was wrong with it (unless it is grouped with the other bids and is say less than 3% lower than the others). If a bid is say 25% or even 15% lower than the others, the contractor might not (probably would not) get through that job; assuming he can buy all the materials and pay the labor, he might not be able to feed his family or pay his rent for two months or the auto insurance or business liability insurance and if that happens it is not simply his and his family’s problem – as he is fighting with his wife, it becomes EVERYBODY’S problem; he will not be able to complete the job (suing people is not the answer; when people sue someone, it costs them money that they may not recover. The only people guaranteed to win in a lawsuit are the lawyers).

Keep something in mind; some contractors are dishonest from the start: in addition to bidding low to get a job, some of them purposely bid low to scare the competition off. I had a boss do this once. we were working in an area with no competition; some new contractor came into the large suburban neighborhood and my boss “low balled” (his term) a job to drive that person out of the area; it worked. It’s nasty and some deli clerk knew what my boss had done and called him a “cut throat”. The problem with “low balling” is, it is not sustainable. It is not fair to anyone – including the consumers who lose competition in that market.

When someone calls me and says they are getting “bids”, sometimes I will ask who I am competing against and if they are my direct, high-quality competition, I might visit (sometimes when the “bidding” is all over the customer will say “you are all within $200 of each other”; this is a good thing for everyone – it means the contractors are doing what they should be doing as professionals specifying quality products and honest bids and the customer will get a quality job even if one of us does not get the job; I am happy for customers and the other contractors when everyone plays fair). If I hear that someone is sourcing bids from bottom feeders or “crooks”, I politely end the call by telling them I do not want to be part of a race to the bottom. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM CAN ARISE FOR A HOMEOWNER: If a customer has selected bottom rung contractors or other contractors decline to visit that customer because they do not want to waste their time trying to be the cheapest, lousiest contractor, the customer is left with a bunch of hacks. The cheapest hack will get the job and on bigger jobs, these hacks often turn around to the customer, after the job is underway, and put their hand out asking for more money; this is not a “mistake”, it is their modus operendi; they know exactly what they are doing and know how to make you feel bad for their supposed “stupidity”. If you ever hear contractors complaining about other contractors or crooked contractors, this is why; contractors who “low ball” and submit dishonest bids ruin it for everyone including both the homeowner and the legitimate contractors – this is why in like 1980 someone called my boss a “cut-throat”.

Someone else was on here a couple of months back trying to source skilled labor for 20 an hour (cash, no benefits nor things like worker’s comp insurance, disability insurance, sick days, something either put aside for a period of unemployment or even unemployment insurance or retirement; none of the things that most American HUMAN BEINGS have taken for granted since early in the 20th century; yes, you heard it here from me, watch the news and read what I write on here: we are moving backwards in this country to the “good old days” that many of us, including me, and many of my customers of color would rather forget) to tile his bathroom; not only was this a slap in the face to every one of us who toils with our hands, but all that person’s exploitative behavior was going to gain him was a lot of headaches in addition to adding to the societal problems of having unrelated adult human beings sleep 4 to a room like men on a plantation in some neighborhood far from where he (the customer) lives. As painful as it is, all of us at some point end up having to pay the price of the poor decisions we make with our houses and money; sometimes those mistakes appear soon (a contractor cannot complete a job) or later (things break and the human beings who were part of making the job happen suffer the indignity of having to rely on government programs). As repulsive as what I just said might sound, it is what goes on as we play this game and people press contractors for lower and lower bids; someone has to cheat somewhere and a lot of cheaters manage to survive.

If I have not convinced you yet, read on:

I used to do more varied work, often around the final details (wood trim, balustrades, cabinets; the final details that take time to do correctly and jump out at you if they are poorly done). i would get calls from potential customers upset and crying (i mean crying and fighting with spouses, blaming each other and blaming the contractor and contemplating divorce; i got a phone call once and the woman said she “there is a gun in the corner and i am going to shoot my husband” – i am not kidding) because their contractor was a “crook” and “screwed” them over and they had either fired the contractor or he abandoned the job BECAUSE THE MONEY WAS NOT THERE for him to complete the job. sometimes they were correct, the contractor was a crook: one contractor went on a sun holiday every time the customer gave him a progress payment (she should have reported him; WE cannot use money that way) and sometimes people have other issues, gambling or substance abuse. But most times the issue was the customer made money the overriding factor in the job and made the mistake of taking the lowest bid (and many of these people have the money; they drive nice cars and own second homes and send their children to private schools). Yes, I understand that sometimes with emergency repairs, we have to do what we have to do to keep a roof over our heads. but if it can wait (if you can live with that crappy bathroom for another five years and keep driving the same three-year-old car), save your money and select contractors based on their experience and reputation and do not ever, ever select the lowest “bid” for anything (unless it is only a few percentage points lower in a group of bids and you like the contractor). when i worked for real estate professionals in buildings, selecting contractors for the same things I now do, I WAS NOT ALLOWED to select the lowest bids and we did not select them because if something went wrong it was OUR RESPONSIBILITY and we would have been putting our jobs on the line; don’t put your marriage and sanity on the line – even to save 20% on a 10k or 100k job. (there was a movie in the 80’s about a couple who bought an old house and by the time they were half way through the renovation, the marriage was done; if I can find the name of it, I will post it).

Everything I am telling you here is true including this: In this house, 20 feet from where I am sitting as I write this, we had our bathroom redone. I did not have the time nor the inclination to do it (I could have gotten through it). we had waited and saved, so the money was there to hire someone and the plan was laid out: we would find a contractor and my wife and son would leave on vacation for two weeks and when they returned, the bathroom would be done. I got the name of a contractor from the local hardware store and called him for a quote. He gave me a price of like $7800. I asked him a few questions that I knew the answers to (and I do not do bathrooms – so these were simple questions) to see if he could answer them on the spot (I was checking how experienced he was); he could not answer questions about something he did every day. he was not “conversant”. It did not matter that he was not a native English speaker; if he had been walking into supply houses buying things for any length of time and knew his stuff and had been trained by experienced people, he would have been conversant – broken English is ok and three word sentences would have been ok (what he was saying to me was “i’ll have to check). I called another contractor who I actually knew because we cross paths in Brooklyn (yes, my park slope customers use him). I did not call him first because I knew his price would be more; it was like $7,000 more (it almost doubled the price). To be fair to the first contractor, I asked the second the very the same questions I had asked the cheaper contractor; the second person answered them on the spot without thinking. We hired the more expensive contractor. Why? Did I have an extra 8k lying around to spend on contractors? Hell no. it was because we only have a bath and a half in this house and if my wife had returned from being away for two weeks and that bathroom was not done, she would have been very unhappy. She would not have allowed me defend myself by saying “the contractor screwed us. it’s his fault”; she would have thought I was incompetent and questioned if I had learned anything in the 35 years between 1980 and 2015.

In the very late 1970’s or 1980, I took a job with a contractor who did home improvements. Windows, siding, doors, gutters, roofs. Just prior to my working for him, he had completed a window trim (capping) project for Brookhaven National Lab. He was bidding in a large field of contractors. my boss had been selected. He was the 15th lowest bid. The federal government or its agency did not drop the 14 lowest bidders because they like spending our tax money. They dropped the 14 lowest bidders because they knew that the process of selecting bids is to select the “safest” bid, not the cheapest. The men and women selecting the bids knew their jobs were on the line if the contractor could not complete the job. For us, working in homes on anything costing more than say $5,000 or $10,00 and definitely on full scale renovations and when working with less known contractors, always get three bids and if two of those are a good bit higher than the lowest and you do not have the money to go with one of the higher ones, do not do the job. save your money and your marriage and wait and go with one of the better contractors.

There was another person on this forum complaining about a pretty bad situation that I think he realized his contractor was not going to get through. He had already stated that he had spoken to other contractors (since this job had began) and he found that all the others wanted at least 50% more to finish his job. This implies one of two things to me: he either took this current contractor without sourcing any other quotes (unlikely) or he picked a “bid” much lower than the other bids (more likely). He is watching his house go down the toilet (he has admitted he may have to let the job and house go). People lose houses over stuff like this; marriages dissolve over things like this and think about what all of that does to the children. And there is no suing some dirt bag contractor because these contractors run their lives the same way they run their businesses; there are no assets. If a contractor has assets they will protect them by not allowing something like this to happen. So again, suing is not an option and the problem becomes the homeowner’s problem.

I will not get any likes on this board for writing this because when things go wrong with contractors and spouses are fighting, it is much easier for them to turn to each other and scream “the contractor screwed us”. but who picked the contractor?

Steve
Brownstone Home Inspection, LLC

Op, what I am about to say is long but I am about to offer perspective that few people on this board have and some people wish they had had and some people will wish they had never heard. Those who like to defer responsibility and those who have been burned by the system I am about to describe, do not want to talk about this because what I am about to say makes the ULTIMATE selection of contractors (especially when using a ”bid” system) the responsibility of the homeowner, even when the contractor “screws up”. Understand, when using a “bid” system to select contractors, red flags often appear but people fail to heed them because they are seduced by a low price (the red flags can be any number of warnings that one would look at when judging the character and integrity of anyone we meet; you will be working closely with contractors; judge them as if you have to share a cubicle with them or you are hiring them to work on your team at the office). As it is, I do not like the word “bid” because when used by homeowners it often implies the cheapest price. When used by re al estate and construction industry professionals, it means the “safest” price and the safest price is NEVER the lowest price. What follows is long winded only because as I make my case, i can cite true examples, one reaching back to about 1980, as I attempt to convey to you and others what can and will go wrong when a bid system is used improperly.

It has taken me something like forty years of working in this industry and ten years of watching nightmares unfold on this board to understand what was going wrong when major jobs fell apart for homeowners. When it happens once to a homeowner, most of them assume that a contractor made a mistake or was a crook (it can happen because a contractor is less experienced, overlooked something, or is a crook; usually it is the contractor’s “fault” but unknowing homeowners “allow” it to happen). When it happens to the same person several times over decades and they fail to see a pattern, they simply say “all contractors are ‘crooks’” and think these contractors keep “screwing” them. what they do not understand is; even though they used a “bidding” process to select the contractors, the bidding process is not without flaws and depending on the quality of the contractors working in that environment and how the customer uses the bids, the system can be downright misleading.

Here is the problem: Contractors know they are often bidding against others (this is the free market and that market protects the customer while making it harder for contractors, especially if we are bidding against actual crooked contractors; that is why contractors hate crooks and cheats) and because of this contractors are often under intense pressure to submit a bid lower than they might be comfortable with (I do not fall for this, I tell customers “If you are using bids to select the lowest price, I am not interested; I want you to hire me because I do the best work”). Less experienced and/or shady contractors who need the work and might have trouble getting jobs because they look or sound less than desirable often know they are bidding against others who have a better chance at getting the job so they will often rely on short cuts (shoddy work) to save money in order to produce a more attractive price. Often, after the job has begun, some of these people go back to the customer with their hand out looking for more money; others wait until the end of the job and as they are fighting with the customer because money is getting tighter, they will abandon it; this is what often happens when people say “contractors are crooks”.

Before I continue to support what I am saying with some real life examples, let me back up a little:

Whenever we do anything in these houses, ANYTHING AT ALL, it ALWAYS grows into something else. when we open a wall to fix one thing, it grows into a job requiring three trades. sometimes unexpected things come up but experienced contractors KNOW what those things are before they begin opening walls and it is our job as contractors to tell you “if we do that, we will have to do that and that as well and we will need … (pick your trade & amount of additional money). If you bring someone in who has not been through a lot of whatever it is they do, they will not have the foresight to see the problems and either prepare contingencies (money built into the quote) or be in a position to advise the customer. Some less than honest contractors may actually know something and may NOT convey it at the onset because they need a job and figure the customer will have no choice but to cough up more money after the job has begun (you read it here, sometimes when this happens, it is not a mistake, is their modus operendi).

WE (contractors) are only people. Many of us have little in the way of formal education beyond high school and often work without industry related classroom training and no training in such things as finance (the writer of this has a BA, some master’s work, and a certificate in Building Management but has NOT taken ONE finance, budgeting, or accounting class). Keep something in mind, we hear about people with MBA’s from the best universities getting themselves in financial trouble all the time; contractors are just as capable of getting in trouble if not more so. WE are humans and we can and do make mistakes (contractors will not admit this when selling jobs; I am admitting this now because at 58 years old, most of this is behind me). We are not magicians; if the money is not there, the money is not there:

Some time ago someone was on this forum saying that their contractor had left a $20k line out of a quote and notified them of this after he had started the job; the homeowner was conflicted; they were decent enough to think of the contractor and felt he deserved the money but also felt that it was his mistake and therefore his responsibility. as it was, by some things the customer said, i suspected the customer had chosen what was the lowest “bid” (I asked and the customer confirmed). This is the thing about the lowest bid; IT IS ALREADY “SUSPECT” – in other words, the only reason the lowest bid was the lowest was because something was wrong with it (unless it is grouped with the other bids and is say less than 3% lower than the others). If a bid is say 25% or even 15% lower than the others, the contractor might not (probably would not) get through that job; assuming he can buy all the materials and pay the labor, he might not be able to feed his family or pay his rent for two months or the auto insurance or business liability insurance and if that happens it is not simply his and his family’s problem – as he is fighting with his wife, it becomes EVERYBODY’S problem; he will not be able to complete the job (suing people is not the answer; when people sue someone, it costs them money that they may not recover. The only people guaranteed to win in a lawsuit are the lawyers).

Keep something in mind; some contractors are dishonest from the start: in addition to bidding low to get a job, some of them purposely bid low to scare the competition off. I had a boss do this once. we were working in an area with no competition; some new contractor came into the large suburban neighborhood and my boss “low balled” (his term) a job to drive that person out of the area; it worked. It’s nasty and some deli clerk knew what my boss had done and called him a “cut throat”. The problem with “low balling” is, it is not sustainable. It is not fair to anyone – including the consumers who lose competition in that market.

When someone calls me and says they are getting “bids”, sometimes I will ask who I am competing against and if they are my direct, high-quality competition, I might visit (sometimes when the “bidding” is all over the customer will say “you are all within $200 of each other”; this is a good thing for everyone – it means the contractors are doing what they should be doing as professionals specifying quality products and honest bids and the customer will get a quality job even if one of us does not get the job; I am happy for customers and the other contractors when everyone plays fair). If I hear that someone is sourcing bids from bottom feeders or “crooks”, I politely end the call by telling them I do not want to be part of a race to the bottom. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM CAN ARISE FOR A HOMEOWNER: If a customer has selected bottom rung contractors or other contractors decline to visit that customer because they do not want to waste their time trying to be the cheapest, lousiest contractor, the customer is left with a bunch of hacks. The cheapest hack will get the job and on bigger jobs, these hacks often turn around to the customer, after the job is underway, and put their hand out asking for more money; this is not a “mistake”, it is their modus operendi; they know exactly what they are doing and know how to make you feel bad for their supposed “stupidity”. If you ever hear contractors complaining about other contractors or crooked contractors, this is why; contractors who “low ball” and submit dishonest bids ruin it for everyone including both the homeowner and the legitimate contractors – this is why in like 1980 someone called my boss a “cut-throat”.

Someone else was on here a couple of months back trying to source skilled labor for 20 an hour (cash, no benefits nor things like worker’s comp insurance, disability insurance, sick days, something either put aside for a period of unemployment or even unemployment insurance or retirement; none of the things that most American HUMAN BEINGS have taken for granted since early in the 20th century; yes, you heard it here from me, watch the news and read what I write on here: we are moving backwards in this country to the “good old days” that many of us, including me, and many of my customers of color would rather forget) to tile his bathroom; not only was this a slap in the face to every one of us who toils with our hands, but all that person’s exploitative behavior was going to gain him was a lot of headaches in addition to adding to the societal problems of having unrelated adult human beings sleep 4 to a room like men on a plantation in some neighborhood far from where he (the customer) lives. As painful as it is, all of us at some point end up having to pay the price of the poor decisions we make with our houses and money; sometimes those mistakes appear soon (a contractor cannot complete a job) or later (things break and the human beings who were part of making the job happen suffer the indignity of having to rely on government programs). As repulsive as what I just said might sound, it is what goes on as we play this game and people press contractors for lower and lower bids; someone has to cheat somewhere and a lot of cheaters manage to survive.

If I have not convinced you yet, read on:

I used to do more varied work, often around the final details (wood trim, balustrades, cabinets; the final details that take time to do correctly and jump out at you if they are poorly done). i would get calls from potential customers upset and crying (i mean crying and fighting with spouses, blaming each other and blaming the contractor and contemplating divorce; i got a phone call once and the woman said she “there is a gun in the corner and i am going to shoot my husband” – i am not kidding) because their contractor was a “crook” and “screwed” them over and they had either fired the contractor or he abandoned the job BECAUSE THE MONEY WAS NOT THERE for him to complete the job. sometimes they were correct, the contractor was a crook: one contractor went on a sun holiday every time the customer gave him a progress payment (she should have reported him; WE cannot use money that way) and sometimes people have other issues, gambling or substance abuse. But most times the issue was the customer made money the overriding factor in the job and made the mistake of taking the lowest bid (and many of these people have the money; they drive nice cars and own second homes and send their children to private schools). Yes, I understand that sometimes with emergency repairs, we have to do what we have to do to keep a roof over our heads. but if it can wait (if you can live with that crappy bathroom for another five years and keep driving the same three-year-old car), save your money and select contractors based on their experience and reputation and do not ever, ever select the lowest “bid” for anything (unless it is only a few percentage points lower in a group of bids and you like the contractor). when i worked for real estate professionals in buildings, selecting contractors for the same things I now do, I WAS NOT ALLOWED to select the lowest bids and we did not select them because if something went wrong it was OUR RESPONSIBILITY and we would have been putting our jobs on the line; don’t put your marriage and sanity on the line – even to save 20% on a 10k or 100k job. (there was a movie in the 80’s about a couple who bought an old house and by the time they were half way through the renovation, the marriage was done; if I can find the name of it, I will post it).

Everything I am telling you here is true including this: In this house, 20 feet from where I am sitting as I write this, we had our bathroom redone. I did not have the time nor the inclination to do it (I could have gotten through it). we had waited and saved, so the money was there to hire someone and the plan was laid out: we would find a contractor and my wife and son would leave on vacation for two weeks and when they returned, the bathroom would be done. I got the name of a contractor from the local hardware store and called him for a quote. He gave me a price of like $7800. I asked him a few questions that I knew the answers to (and I do not do bathrooms – so these were simple questions) to see if he could answer them on the spot (I was checking how experienced he was); he could not answer questions about something he did every day. he was not “conversant”. It did not matter that he was not a native English speaker; if he had been walking into supply houses buying things for any length of time and knew his stuff and had been trained by experienced people, he would have been conversant – broken English is ok and three word sentences would have been ok (what he was saying to me was “i’ll have to check). I called another contractor who I actually knew because we cross paths in Brooklyn (yes, my park slope customers use him). I did not call him first because I knew his price would be more; it was like $7,000 more (it almost doubled the price). To be fair to the first contractor, I asked the second the very the same questions I had asked the cheaper contractor; the second person answered them on the spot without thinking. We hired the more expensive contractor. Why? Did I have an extra 8k lying around to spend on contractors? Hell no. it was because we only have a bath and a half in this house and if my wife had returned from being away for two weeks and that bathroom was not done, she would have been very unhappy. She would not have allowed me defend myself by saying “the contractor screwed us. it’s his fault”; she would have thought I was incompetent and questioned if I had learned anything in the 35 years between 1980 and 2015.

In the very late 1970’s or 1980, I took a job with a contractor who did home improvements. Windows, siding, doors, gutters, roofs. Just prior to my working for him, he had completed a window trim (capping) project for Brookhaven National Lab. He was bidding in a large field of contractors. my boss had been selected. He was the 15th lowest bid. The federal government or its agency did not drop the 14 lowest bidders because they like spending our tax money. They dropped the 14 lowest bidders because they knew that the process of selecting bids is to select the “safest” bid, not the cheapest. The men and women selecting the bids knew their jobs were on the line if the contractor could not complete the job. For us, working in homes on anything costing more than say $5,000 or $10,00 and definitely on full scale renovations and when working with less known contractors, always get three bids and if two of those are a good bit higher than the lowest and you do not have the money to go with one of the higher ones, do not do the job. save your money and your marriage and wait and go with one of the better contractors.

There was another person on this forum complaining about a pretty bad situation that I think he realized his contractor was not going to get through. He had already stated that he had spoken to other contractors (since this job had began) and he found that all the others wanted at least 50% more to finish his job. This implies one of two things to me: he either took this current contractor without sourcing any other quotes (unlikely) or he picked a “bid” much lower than the other bids (more likely). He is watching his house go down the toilet (he has admitted he may have to let the job and house go). People lose houses over stuff like this; marriages dissolve over things like this and think about what all of that does to the children. And there is no suing some dirt bag contractor because these contractors run their lives the same way they run their businesses; there are no assets. If a contractor has assets they will protect them by not allowing something like this to happen. So again, suing is not an option and the problem becomes the homeowner’s problem.

I will not get any likes on this board for writing this because when things go wrong with contractors and spouses are fighting, it is much easier for them to turn to each other and scream “the contractor screwed us”. but who picked the contractor?

Steve
Brownstone Home Inspection, LLC

Op, what I am about to say is long but I am about to offer perspective that few people on this board have and some people wish they had had and some people will wish they had never heard. Those who like to defer responsibility and those who have been burned by the system I am about to describe, do not want to talk about this because what I am about to say makes the ULTIMATE selection of contractors (especially when using a ”bid” system) the responsibility of the homeowner, even when the contractor “screws up”. Understand, when using a “bid” system to select contractors, red flags often appear but people fail to heed them because they are seduced by a low price (the red flags can be any number of warnings that one would look at when judging the character and integrity of anyone we meet; you will be working closely with contractors; judge them as if you have to share a cubicle with them or you are hiring them to work on your team at the office). As it is, I do not like the word “bid” because when used by homeowners it often implies the cheapest price. When used by re al estate and construction industry professionals, it means the “safest” price and the safest price is NEVER the lowest price. What follows is long winded only because as I make my case, i can cite true examples, one reaching back to about 1980, as I attempt to convey to you and others what can and will go wrong when a bid system is used improperly.

It has taken me something like forty years of working in this industry and ten years of watching nightmares unfold on this board to understand what was going wrong when major jobs fell apart for homeowners. When it happens once to a homeowner, most of them assume that a contractor made a mistake or was a crook (it can happen because a contractor is less experienced, overlooked something, or is a crook; usually it is the contractor’s “fault” but unknowing homeowners “allow” it to happen). When it happens to the same person several times over decades and they fail to see a pattern, they simply say “all contractors are ‘crooks’” and think these contractors keep “screwing” them. what they do not understand is; even though they used a “bidding” process to select the contractors, the bidding process is not without flaws and depending on the quality of the contractors working in that environment and how the customer uses the bids, the system can be downright misleading.

Here is the problem: Contractors know they are often bidding against others (this is the free market and that market protects the customer while making it harder for contractors, especially if we are bidding against actual crooked contractors; that is why contractors hate crooks and cheats) and because of this contractors are often under intense pressure to submit a bid lower than they might be comfortable with (I do not fall for this, I tell customers “If you are using bids to select the lowest price, I am not interested; I want you to hire me because I do the best work”). Less experienced and/or shady contractors who need the work and might have trouble getting jobs because they look or sound less than desirable often know they are bidding against others who have a better chance at getting the job so they will often rely on short cuts (shoddy work) to save money in order to produce a more attractive price. Often, after the job has begun, some of these people go back to the customer with their hand out looking for more money; others wait until the end of the job and as they are fighting with the customer because money is getting tighter, they will abandon it; this is what often happens when people say “contractors are crooks”.

Before I continue to support what I am saying with some real life examples, let me back up a little:

Whenever we do anything in these houses, ANYTHING AT ALL, it ALWAYS grows into something else. when we open a wall to fix one thing, it grows into a job requiring three trades. sometimes unexpected things come up but experienced contractors KNOW what those things are before they begin opening walls and it is our job as contractors to tell you “if we do that, we will have to do that and that as well and we will need … (pick your trade & amount of additional money). If you bring someone in who has not been through a lot of whatever it is they do, they will not have the foresight to see the problems and either prepare contingencies (money built into the quote) or be in a position to advise the customer. Some less than honest contractors may actually know something and may NOT convey it at the onset because they need a job and figure the customer will have no choice but to cough up more money after the job has begun (you read it here, sometimes when this happens, it is not a mistake, is their modus operendi).

WE (contractors) are only people. Many of us have little in the way of formal education beyond high school and often work without industry related classroom training and no training in such things as finance (the writer of this has a BA, some master’s work, and a certificate in Building Management but has NOT taken ONE finance, budgeting, or accounting class). Keep something in mind, we hear about people with MBA’s from the best universities getting themselves in financial trouble all the time; contractors are just as capable of getting in trouble if not more so. WE are humans and we can and do make mistakes (contractors will not admit this when selling jobs; I am admitting this now because at 58 years old, most of this is behind me). We are not magicians; if the money is not there, the money is not there:

Some time ago someone was on this forum saying that their contractor had left a $20k line out of a quote and notified them of this after he had started the job; the homeowner was conflicted; they were decent enough to think of the contractor and felt he deserved the money but also felt that it was his mistake and therefore his responsibility. as it was, by some things the customer said, i suspected the customer had chosen what was the lowest “bid” (I asked and the customer confirmed). This is the thing about the lowest bid; IT IS ALREADY “SUSPECT” – in other words, the only reason the lowest bid was the lowest was because something was wrong with it (unless it is grouped with the other bids and is say less than 3% lower than the others). If a bid is say 25% or even 15% lower than the others, the contractor might not (probably would not) get through that job; assuming he can buy all the materials and pay the labor, he might not be able to feed his family or pay his rent for two months or the auto insurance or business liability insurance and if that happens it is not simply his and his family’s problem – as he is fighting with his wife, it becomes EVERYBODY’S problem; he will not be able to complete the job (suing people is not the answer; when people sue someone, it costs them money that they may not recover. The only people guaranteed to win in a lawsuit are the lawyers).

Keep something in mind; some contractors are dishonest from the start: in addition to bidding low to get a job, some of them purposely bid low to scare the competition off. I had a boss do this once. we were working in an area with no competition; some new contractor came into the large suburban neighborhood and my boss “low balled” (his term) a job to drive that person out of the area; it worked. It’s nasty and some deli clerk knew what my boss had done and called him a “cut throat”. The problem with “low balling” is, it is not sustainable. It is not fair to anyone – including the consumers who lose competition in that market.

When someone calls me and says they are getting “bids”, sometimes I will ask who I am competing against and if they are my direct, high-quality competition, I might visit (sometimes when the “bidding” is all over the customer will say “you are all within $200 of each other”; this is a good thing for everyone – it means the contractors are doing what they should be doing as professionals specifying quality products and honest bids and the customer will get a quality job even if one of us does not get the job; I am happy for customers and the other contractors when everyone plays fair). If I hear that someone is sourcing bids from bottom feeders or “crooks”, I politely end the call by telling them I do not want to be part of a race to the bottom. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM CAN ARISE FOR A HOMEOWNER: If a customer has selected bottom rung contractors or other contractors decline to visit that customer because they do not want to waste their time trying to be the cheapest, lousiest contractor, the customer is left with a bunch of hacks. The cheapest hack will get the job and on bigger jobs, these hacks often turn around to the customer, after the job is underway, and put their hand out asking for more money; this is not a “mistake”, it is their modus operendi; they know exactly what they are doing and know how to make you feel bad for their supposed “stupidity”. If you ever hear contractors complaining about other contractors or crooked contractors, this is why; contractors who “low ball” and submit dishonest bids ruin it for everyone including both the homeowner and the legitimate contractors – this is why in like 1980 someone called my boss a “cut-throat”.

Someone else was on here a couple of months back trying to source skilled labor for 20 an hour (cash, no benefits nor things like worker’s comp insurance, disability insurance, sick days, something either put aside for a period of unemployment or even unemployment insurance or retirement; none of the things that most American HUMAN BEINGS have taken for granted since early in the 20th century; yes, you heard it here from me, watch the news and read what I write on here: we are moving backwards in this country to the “good old days” that many of us, including me, and many of my customers of color would rather forget) to tile his bathroom; not only was this a slap in the face to every one of us who toils with our hands, but all that person’s exploitative behavior was going to gain him was a lot of headaches in addition to adding to the societal problems of having unrelated adult human beings sleep 4 to a room like men on a plantation in some neighborhood far from where he (the customer) lives. As painful as it is, all of us at some point end up having to pay the price of the poor decisions we make with our houses and money; sometimes those mistakes appear soon (a contractor cannot complete a job) or later (things break and the human beings who were part of making the job happen suffer the indignity of having to rely on government programs). As repulsive as what I just said might sound, it is what goes on as we play this game and people press contractors for lower and lower bids; someone has to cheat somewhere and a lot of cheaters manage to survive.

If I have not convinced you yet, read on:

I used to do more varied work, often around the final details (wood trim, balustrades, cabinets; the final details that take time to do correctly and jump out at you if they are poorly done). i would get calls from potential customers upset and crying (i mean crying and fighting with spouses, blaming each other and blaming the contractor and contemplating divorce; i got a phone call once and the woman said she “there is a gun in the corner and i am going to shoot my husband” – i am not kidding) because their contractor was a “crook” and “screwed” them over and they had either fired the contractor or he abandoned the job BECAUSE THE MONEY WAS NOT THERE for him to complete the job. sometimes they were correct, the contractor was a crook: one contractor went on a sun holiday every time the customer gave him a progress payment (she should have reported him; WE cannot use money that way) and sometimes people have other issues, gambling or substance abuse. But most times the issue was the customer made money the overriding factor in the job and made the mistake of taking the lowest bid (and many of these people have the money; they drive nice cars and own second homes and send their children to private schools). Yes, I understand that sometimes with emergency repairs, we have to do what we have to do to keep a roof over our heads. but if it can wait (if you can live with that crappy bathroom for another five years and keep driving the same three-year-old car), save your money and select contractors based on their experience and reputation and do not ever, ever select the lowest “bid” for anything (unless it is only a few percentage points lower in a group of bids and you like the contractor). when i worked for real estate professionals in buildings, selecting contractors for the same things I now do, I WAS NOT ALLOWED to select the lowest bids and we did not select them because if something went wrong it was OUR RESPONSIBILITY and we would have been putting our jobs on the line; don’t put your marriage and sanity on the line – even to save 20% on a 10k or 100k job. (there was a movie in the 80’s about a couple who bought an old house and by the time they were half way through the renovation, the marriage was done; if I can find the name of it, I will post it).

Everything I am telling you here is true including this: In this house, 20 feet from where I am sitting as I write this, we had our bathroom redone. I did not have the time nor the inclination to do it (I could have gotten through it). we had waited and saved, so the money was there to hire someone and the plan was laid out: we would find a contractor and my wife and son would leave on vacation for two weeks and when they returned, the bathroom would be done. I got the name of a contractor from the local hardware store and called him for a quote. He gave me a price of like $7800. I asked him a few questions that I knew the answers to (and I do not do bathrooms – so these were simple questions) to see if he could answer them on the spot (I was checking how experienced he was); he could not answer questions about something he did every day. he was not “conversant”. It did not matter that he was not a native English speaker; if he had been walking into supply houses buying things for any length of time and knew his stuff and had been trained by experienced people, he would have been conversant – broken English is ok and three word sentences would have been ok (what he was saying to me was “i’ll have to check). I called another contractor who I actually knew because we cross paths in Brooklyn (yes, my park slope customers use him). I did not call him first because I knew his price would be more; it was like $7,000 more (it almost doubled the price). To be fair to the first contractor, I asked the second the very the same questions I had asked the cheaper contractor; the second person answered them on the spot without thinking. We hired the more expensive contractor. Why? Did I have an extra 8k lying around to spend on contractors? Hell no. it was because we only have a bath and a half in this house and if my wife had returned from being away for two weeks and that bathroom was not done, she would have been very unhappy. She would not have allowed me defend myself by saying “the contractor screwed us. it’s his fault”; she would have thought I was incompetent and questioned if I had learned anything in the 35 years between 1980 and 2015.

In the very late 1970’s or 1980, I took a job with a contractor who did home improvements. Windows, siding, doors, gutters, roofs. Just prior to my working for him, he had completed a window trim (capping) project for Brookhaven National Lab. He was bidding in a large field of contractors. my boss had been selected. He was the 15th lowest bid. The federal government or its agency did not drop the 14 lowest bidders because they like spending our tax money. They dropped the 14 lowest bidders because they knew that the process of selecting bids is to select the “safest” bid, not the cheapest. The men and women selecting the bids knew their jobs were on the line if the contractor could not complete the job. For us, working in homes on anything costing more than say $5,000 or $10,00 and definitely on full scale renovations and when working with less known contractors, always get three bids and if two of those are a good bit higher than the lowest and you do not have the money to go with one of the higher ones, do not do the job. save your money and your marriage and wait and go with one of the better contractors.

There was another person on this forum complaining about a pretty bad situation that I think he realized his contractor was not going to get through. He had already stated that he had spoken to other contractors (since this job had began) and he found that all the others wanted at least 50% more to finish his job. This implies one of two things to me: he either took this current contractor without sourcing any other quotes (unlikely) or he picked a “bid” much lower than the other bids (more likely). He is watching his house go down the toilet (he has admitted he may have to let the job and house go). People lose houses over stuff like this; marriages dissolve over things like this and think about what all of that does to the children. And there is no suing some dirt bag contractor because these contractors run their lives the same way they run their businesses; there are no assets. If a contractor has assets they will protect them by not allowing something like this to happen. So again, suing is not an option and the problem becomes the homeowner’s problem.

I will not get any likes on this board for writing this because when things go wrong with contractors and spouses are fighting, it is much easier for them to turn to each other and scream “the contractor screwed us”. but who picked the contractor?

Steve
Brownstone Home Inspection, LLC

I’d also recommend starting with an architect, ideally someone in your area who has worked on many similar projects before. (An architect will also advise whether you need an engineer depending on the condition of the house.) Have you lived here long? Will you need a whole-house electrical and/or plumbing upgrade and add HVAC at the same time, or do you only need to update a few wet rooms? With a two-family configuration, depending on the situation, sometimes it may be possible to turn a bathroom into a kitchen, etc., for example, without triggering the need for a new C of O, which can sometimes have onerous requirements such as sprinklers and cause high taxes later. Once the scope of work and drawings are done, you can begin finding a contractor, and the architect is likely to know a few they have worked with before.

Always vet the contractors, make sure they are licensed, get recommendations, look at at work they have done, have a proper contract that specifies scope of work, payments, payment due dates, etc., pay after (not before) each section of work is completed, and hold some money back until everything is completed at the end.

Read what cate is saying. Everything she is saying is correct but it has happen on this board where someone does ALL of what cate is saying (architect, contract, license, insurance, references) and if the bidding process i describe above is not managed correctly, it can lead to disaster. All a sincere contractor has to do is forget to include one line or number that equates to say $30,000 in the quote on a job this size AND the customer selects that bid because it is the lowest and the job will go down the toilet. All of the licenses and reference checking in the world can not prevent that from happening.

Find an architect whose style you like, and who already has multiple projects _just like yours_ under their belt — especially if yours involves filings with LPC.

Fix your systems the right way. You can put a really nice house on top of a lot of garbage between the walls, and then when that garbage starts to fail, you’ll get the pleasure of watching your past investment either rot away or get torn apart during the fix. At this moment I can now confidently say the only systems in my 106 year old house that I _haven’t_ replaced entirely are the 8 year old asphalt roof (soon) and the 10 year old boiler (meh). What I _have_ replaced or repaired? Everything. I still have the terrible 1970s kitchen, but at least I know that the stuff going down the drain will leave my house, and that I won’t burn it down when I run the vacuum and the microwave at the same time.

Seconding what J posted regarding insulation. Your utility bills will thank you, and it’ll be nice when you can sleep soundly and not wake when your neighbor sneezes.

Lastly, the only person who will ever know as much about your house, or care about it to the extent one can, is you. There are lots of good GC’s who are a little out of their depth with some of these old houses. There are a number of GC’s who are great at tearing out old stuff and putting in new stuff. If you like the old stuff, do your research (or ask folks on here like me) about the specialists who know what to do with it. I had a guy who told me he specializes in slate roofs. I brought him over for an estimate and he told me he’d cover the broken slates in roofing cement. While that’s a red flag for me, would it be a red flag for the GC’s I’ve worked with in the past? I don’t know, and I don’t care to find out after he’s done the evil deed and he expects me to pay him thousands of dollars for ruining my house.

Great advice, colonialrevival!

Start the process with an Architect. We are located in Bedstuy and have completed many such projects in the neighborhood over the last 20 years. We would be happy to assist. We can be reached at “office@mimarchitects.com”

as coloniel suggests, you need an architect who understands you (and why you live where you live, a certain anesthetic). As colonial also points out many contractors do not always understand this and what is important and some just don’t care to try to understand; the roofing cement on the slate on the roof. Understand this, there are a lot of younger architects out there who lack the expeirience and understanding as to what can go wrong with contractors. I do not mean the stuff we can see. Do not rely on architects to guide you through the business aspect of managing a major project and be aware that when contractors make mistakes, people are not always aware until it is too late. You are the major stake holder here (you have the most to lose), not them, and it is up to you to mitigate risks when dealing with these people.