When Is The Best Time To Start Planning Your Home Remodel?

It’s no secret that embarking on a home renovation is a process. If you’ve been thinking of remodeling your home, you may wonder when and how to get the ball rolling. Like any significant investment, having a healthy runway for the pre-construction process will help lead to a positive and more seamless build phase. Keep reading to learn the timing and steps before you demo your walls!

The first step is deciding what you want done and how much you want to spend. Take a look at what your end goal is for your home remodel. Are you planning to gut your entire house or only renovate your primary bathroom? The size and scope of your intended project will determine the amount of time it will take before you can get started. If your goal is something substantial like a whole home or the entire first floor remodel, and you think by this time next year you’ll be ready to start construction, now is the perfect time to begin your research. If it’s something smaller like a single-room remodel, plan to begin researching about six months before you’d want to start construction. It can take 1-3 months to determine your scope and budget.

Once you know what you’d like to improve in your home, we recommend vetting 2-3 different Design-Build companies. Design-Build is a more integrated approach to home remodeling, where the client hires a single entity—often a firm that provides design and construction services—to handle the entire project. This selection process can take at least a month. A home remodel is a time-consuming, invasive project so you want to ensure the company you hire vibes well with you and your family.

Once you have decided on your remodel team, finalizing your design plan and scope takes about 4-6 months. At BLB, we start with an introductory meeting at your house to learn more about you and your project. After reviewing with our team, we’ll meet again to share our recently formulated scope of work and initial budgetary range.

Assuming everything sounds good and you sign our Design & Scope Development agreement, the next step is working on the actual design with our architect. The architect will develop the project using CAD software, which creates a rendering of your new space(s). Following an approved design, we bring our trade partners on-site to develop a clearly defined scope of work for trade-specific categories like plumbing and electrical.

Once the preliminary plans are complete, we work with you to begin product selection. We then send drawings and your selections to our vendors to determine final pricing. We also create any allowances needed for those specialty items that are unknown. When your scope of work and project cost are complete, we will meet one final time to present our construction contract.

After signing a contract and contributing your initial deposit, the next step is scheduling the project and starting the permit application process. Typically, it takes approximately 4-6 months for your project to get up and running after a contract is signed. The exact timeframe will depend on the scope of your project and the amount of projects we have at the time. At this point, the sales team hands the project off to the project manager. The project manager will create the schedule and inform all subcontractors of the projected start date. While we wait for the project to begin, you will work with us to finalize and approve product selections, and the project developer will procure the selections.

With an approved building permit, we segue from pre-construction to construction, and your project begins. The project manager will finalize the schedule, subcontractors are on standby, and we will coordinate the on-site facilities, like a dumpster and portapotties.

Are you ready to remodel your home? Connect with us to see how we can help bring your dream home to life!