Home remodeling projects are a big deal. They take a while to plan and they mean a lot to everyone who they’re affecting. When you start a home remodeling project, your hope is that everything falls in place the way it’s supposed to. Part of that has to do with planning, and a lot of it has to do with selecting the right home remodeling company. But beyond that, regardless of who you choose, you need to know how to correctly communicate with them.
Tips for Properly Communicating with Your Home Remodeling Company
Misreading, misinterpreting, mishearing – you name it. Communication is at the heart of it all, and if you don’t have proper communication practices set up for how to talk to your home remodeling company, you can expect any of the former to be excuses for tasks gone sideways.
We’ve worked with a wide variety of clients. From all the interactions we’ve had, these are a few of our top tips regarding how you can properly communicate with your home remodeling company:
1) Timeliness
Nothing gets done if you don’t do anything. And that goes both ways! You should be working with a remodeling company that demonstrated they have time to work with you. If you have to pry an email out of them with 3 follow-up messages and voicemails, stop right there. They have too much on their plate, or they’re just plain bad at communicating.
Similarly, make sure you are always on top of communication with your home remodeling company. If they ask you any questions via email phone call and you don’t have the answer right away, do everything you can to get them a response as soon as possible. In the same way you’re waiting on them to take action, remodelers have a slew of projects on their hands they need to move forward with. Pay due diligence to craft detailed messages with timely responses to keep your communication with your home remodeling company healthy.
2) Schedule Time to Talk
This is huge! You may catch your remodeler with an out-of-the-blue call where they have 5 minutes to talk. But that is not the best time to get valuable information from them. If you want to have productive and healthy communication with your remodeling company, give them time to plan for the meeting and have materials, sketches, and notes present before you begin. That means scheduling your meetings.
Email your remodeling company and ask them about a few times that work best for a phone conversation and come prepared with all the things you want to discuss. Make it clear regarding what you want to talk about and give them a chance to put their best foot forward at your meetings.
3) Be Flexible
Remodeling companies are busy. While you can bet that any great remodeler will carve out time for important meetings and conversations, you also need to recognize that they, like you, have busy schedules. Find a remodeling company that’s going to be flexible with you and reciprocate the favor to them. While the occasional hiccup or reschedule may feel inconvenient initially, being flexible is much more beneficial in the long run for healthy communication and project planning.
4) Be Upfront
Healthy communication with your home remodeling company requires you to be completely transparent and upfront about everything pertaining to the project. That means in beginning planning phases – let your remodeling company know what you’re expecting. A lot of the planning phase will be a back-and-forth trade of ideas/blueprints between you and them. When you see something you don’t like, mention it right away – don’t let it make its way into construction without revisiting the ideas.
The same applies for changes during construction. If you notice remodelers doing something you don’t like, or something that wasn’t in the initial scoped out concepts for the project, let them know immediately. It’s way easier to fix it when it happens than once they’ve moved on.
Conclusion
Knowing how to communicate with your home remodeling company is imperative for a smooth renovation. Be upfront about ideas and preferences, both during the planning phases and in construction. Be timely in all your responses and find a home remodeling vendor that’s able to reciprocate that behavior. Make sure you set aside scheduled time for meeting or calling your vendor – don’t rely on unexpected 5-minute phone conversations to flush out important details. And finally, make sure you’re flexible with everything. There’s a lot of moving parts in a major home renovation, and working with flexibility in mind is key to maintaining healthy communication practices with your home remodeling company.
