#3 of the Top 10 Sanity Savers When Remodeling
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this review or post, but all opinions are our own.
The budget is set and you find you need to make some changes. This is where we learned the art of making compromises. Always treat your budget as if it is a hard-fast line that can not be crossed. You may actually have room to fudge, but do not be tempted to start creeping in on your original numbers too soon. There are so many unknowns and additional costs that show up at the end of a job. You want that buffer so you can finish the work at hand without having to scramble to finance it.
What we did do was look for ways to shave from other places in our project to get the upgrades we wanted. One place we did that was with our pluming fixtures. Somewhere in the euphoria of our first meeting with the plumber I agreed to Delta basic fixtures at every sink in the house. Mistake number one was setting our budget without seeing the product first. I have nothing against Delta basic, but one look at them in the supply warehouse, I knew I had made a mistake and I wanted to take it back. The fake crystal, single knobs reminded me of a cheap hotel I stayed in as a kid. When I considered future resale I knew there were not going make the cut.
I could have gone to Lowe’s and bought all my hardware at a much lower cost, but my contractor warned me that subcontractors often make money from the sales they bring to their supplier. When they lose the sales I end up making up the difference in the job rate. We did not ask our plumber about sales and commissions, you might want to ahead of time, but we like our plumber. He is our go to guy for our business as well as our home. We like to see people get paid for the work they do, I think it is a weird side effect of owning your own business. So, not changing our original budget, but still getting what we wanted came down to one thing; compromise. In our case we upgraded to the next step up in the Delta line from the supplier. I got some very nice fixtures that fit the style of the house much better. We cut out an expensive kitchen sink with sprayer and went with a single mount version that has a hose in the neck. We reused two of our original fixtures to shave off a few more bucks. We made our upgrades without costing ourselves or cutting payment to our contractor.
One item I wanted to add was an over-range pot filler. I saw several of them on Houzz and wanted one in my kitchen. I checked the wholesaler, but they wanted $495 for the single fixture. For our budget it was not going to happen, it was just too far out of range, so I started searching eBay and amazon. It took a few weeks of searching but one, just one, finally came up for $145. Because of the cuts we had already made to stay in budget we were able to afford to add the pot filler to the project because of it’s minimal cost.
We compromised in the opposite direction with our Kitchen cabinets. We were going to go with a local builder for basic boxes in the basement and kitchen. I wanted a irregular finish so our contractor did some searching and got us in contact with a rep for RavenWood design out of Colorado. They wanted to experiment with new finishes so we worked together to get the look I wanted, which would have been a premium grade, for the basic price. The only problem was they were twice what we had budgeted for. We met with a rep and looked at the cabinets. Their design is unique, in such a way that you do not lose cabinet space to door hinges and drawer tracks. Every bit of the cabinet you pay for is useable space. The product was superior and they achieved the finish I wanted, so we compromised. We dropped the basement cabinets from original budget and just went with high-end cabinets for the kitchen. We spent a week cleaning and staining our former kitchen cabinets and reinstalled them in the basement. They are not nearly as efficient as more modern cabinets, but through the art of compromise I have a kitchen I love and feel I had a part in creating.
Compromise is not about paying less, or giving in. It is about making sure you achieve the look you want, taking care of the people that are taking care of you, all while staying in budget. Don’t move the line if you don’t have to. Try looking for other ways to solve your problem before you buy your way out. I can not say enough about how a clear budget helped us to make very clear and rational decisions based on the numbers we had to work within. Never begin any project without a budget. You can’t compromise without numbers.
