Archive for the Remodeling Category

As an architect for over 37 years and a contractor for over 33 years, I have continually been asked this question.  My quick answer is that it is always desirable from the contractor end to have the Homeowners away from the house while the project is going on. There are a number of benefits to this decision: One reason for the homeowner to leave, for me as the contractor, is that I do not have to factor in major dust containment for set up and tear down each day.  I can just install containment once at the beginning of the job and one teardown at the end.  The next reason is that the workers do not need to do a major cleanup each day for their work.  This normally involves allowing for 2 to 3 man hours of savings each day.  Over the course of the job, that can equate to big savings that I can pass on to the Homeowners. Probably the biggest reason for the Homeowners to leave is dust.  I can truly say I speak from experience on this one.  I recently did some work at my home.  My crews put up what I considered a very […]

This is a follow up on my blog on how to deal with your Insurance Company on a fire loss. (See May 25th 2011 Stan Better’s Blog). I received a huge response on my previous blog on how to deal with your Insurance Company, especially after hurricane Sandy.  I hope it was helpful and informative to my readers.  I now want to expand on some issues I left out of the previous article: Water mitigation and mold This issue is becoming increasingly important and one that the Insurance Companies have tried to back away from.  Let’s assume from your fire, or your flood that you have lots of water inside your house.  The emergency people are now gone and your home is soaked.  The initial amount of money the Insurance Company will pay for on your behalf is what is referred to as “emergency services”.  This means that a 24 hour contractor service can be secured immediately to not only protect the home from vandalism, but also from water being allowed to sit and cause even more damage.  Virtually all insurance companies have this in their policies because they want to protect the home from further damage while the process […]

The last time we talked we discussed the new EPA Lead Safety rules that went into effect on April 22, 2010.  These rules have been a big pain for the contractors and the Owners.  They have added, in most cases where they apply, significant cost to projects.  There is legislation that has been recently passed by the Senate to delay implementation of the program (even though it is currently in effect) until next year due to the fact there is so much confusion about the new rules and given the fact that there are so very few contractors that are licensed to do this work.  Stay tuned for updates.  If you want further into go to the EPA web site  www.epa.gov. Today’s topic is permits.  There is so much confusion about when a permit is required and when it is not.  In the past, each municipality was free to choose which building standard they wanted.  This created a mess because I would have to review different building codes depending on the place and code that was approved for that district.  As of April 2009 the State of Ohio said enough is enough and created one residential code for the entire […]

Hi Everyone My last newsletter was on the business side of remodeling as it related to the state of our economy. This time, I would like to get back to some of the nuts and bolts issues of remodeling. If you were to ask me…Stan-what has been the greatest technological advancement you have seen in your thirty years in the remodeling industry? My answer would be simple and to the point, “LVL”. What the heck is LVL? LVL stands for laminated veneer lumber. What is laminated veneer lumber? Well…let me explain. In the past, we contractors and architects used to only have two alternatives when structurally designing for a remodel job. Our choices were either steel beams or dimensional lumber (meaning 2X solid wood). Both of these alternatives are still very much being used today. The problem was that if you wanted to keep prices down you would choose wood, but wood had a significant drawback. It was very difficult to use to span large distances (say over 10 feet) without getting a very sizable beam or even worse you would need to sandwich multiple beams together to achieve the strength you needed the beam to carry. Also you didn’t […]