Do: You should carefully plan the design and the selection of materials for your project. This is often overlooked. Ensure your plans have doors and hallways that are large enough to allow furniture and appliances to be moved in and out easily. Plan the flooring, cabinetry, and paint with a cohesive intent. Avoid buying what’s on sale just because it’s on sale. Also avoid selecting all the latest trendy designs. Trends can be short-lived and quickly make your home seem outdated. Classic designs often have better long-term resale value. Lastly, lighting is an often-overlooked aspect of renovation. A good lighting plan will include three types of lighting: general lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. Also, more customers today include smart lighting. All these things can have a major impact on the overall impression of your home.
Bathroom Remodeling
Don’t: When selecting a paint finish, take time to consider the room that is being painted. For example, semi-gloss or gloss paint is often used in kitchens and bathrooms for ease of cleaning and wipe-off. Matte finishes are best for ceilings to help them disappear and not attract attention. Satin finishes are ideal for the majority of your home. They will add to the brightness in the house by reflecting just the right amount of light without appearing too shiny.
Flooring
From wet carpets to swollen floorboards, it’s often evident when water has damaged your floor. But if you aren’t sure, it’s important to check immediately in case moisture has become trapped underneath. Note that underlayment and padding are particularly susceptible to water damage and must usually be removed. However, this also presents an opportunity to install new, waterproof flooring in the area. Ceramic tile, high-end vinyl, and certain engineered wood materials can all help protect floors against future water damage repair. If in doubt, ask a professional.
Door Installation/Replacement
Drywalls
1. There is “clean” water, which can come from rain, condensation, or leaky fresh-water pipes. In most small cases, you can clean up this type of water yourself. However, drying wet drywall, plaster, carpet/padding, wood floors, cabinets, and such, may require you to obtain outside services and specialized equipment in order to mitigate damages.
Framing
For water damage jobs, this continued period of drying out the wetted and dampened materials that don’t have to be removed is above and beyond EMS as stated above. Generally, mitigation processes require the demolition of a certain amount of materials such as drywall, baseboards, floating floors, vinyl floors, and carpets. Then, the remaining materials such as wood framing and sub-floors must be dried out. This can take some time to accomplish. But we are talking days to maybe a matter of weeks here, as again, the insurance company does not have to pre-approve the work.
Tile Installation
Carpeting
Porous materials such as carpeting, padding, insulation, fabrics, and such may need to be removed and disposed of. Water can permanently damage most porous materials by shrinking or warping them, and mold will damage them even worse. Again, if in doubt, call a professional to see what can be done about saving the material or furniture. Drying it out quickly with the right equipment may save it!
Don’t: Renovating without permits is risky. Unpermitted renovations often end up wasting time, money, and energy. Often unpermitted work is made to be removed or demolished. This has happened with room additions, roofs, and fences among many other things. Upon resale, the home sale price can be lowered and the sale itself can be jeopardized. This is another area that is handled best by a professional contractor. They will ensure proper permitting occurs and quality standards of the workmanship are maintained.
New Construction
Demolition
When you are wanting something built, you want to know how much it is going to cost. In construction, that’s reasonable. Everything for the job has to be purchased in order to build whatever it is that you want. But in the repair industry, it’s a different animal. Just as when you take your car in for repairs, there are things that pop up being needed to be done. So, you have to deal with the possibility of surprises. In the restoration business, it’s the same thing. Most often there is demolition of the damaged materials which uncovers more damage. Accordingly, it’s very difficult to provide an estimate, and a detailed estimate takes a great deal of time to produce. It is not normally done until after demolition in order that it can be made as accurate as possible to contain all the repairs needed. So, it is standard practice in the restoration industry to require a contract be signed before a detailed estimate can be provided. While we will provide an initial verbal assessment of the repair costs, we cannot put it in writing without a contract to ensure that we will be paid for the time it takes to produce the estimate, and we cannot be held responsible for an inaccurate verbal assessment when a written estimate cannot be provided.
Things are calming down now and you’re nearly out of the woods. You will need to replace damaged drywall which should have already been removed in the damage mitigation phase. How much drywall to remove and replace is a question you will have to answer. Generally speaking, if drywall has swelled or sagged 3/8” or more from the baseline, then you will need to replace the entire sheet. Otherwise you can cut out and replace water-stained portions. And, don’t forget to check the condition of any insulation existing behind damaged drywall. Also, and again, if in doubt, call a professional!