Managing Your Home Remodeling & Renovation Project

As we explore the options for remodeling and renovations we follow along the progress of our project home.

When planning your home remodeling or renovation project one of the main decisions you need to make is who will manage the project. The options are:

1. Add building management to your contract with a Designer
2. Let the building Contractor manage it
3. Engage a building project manager
4. Manager it yourself - you effectively become the Contractor

When making this decision you need to consider four key aspects:

1. Do you have the time? - project managing a home remodeling or renovation project can be a full time job.
2. Do you have the knowledge? - building a new construction is complicated enough, but remodeling and renovation projects are often more complicated as you are dealing with older construction styles, previous structure built to possibly different building compliance codes, blending old and new materials, and often unexpected surprises. To maintain the confidence of your building sub-contractors you need to know how to deal with these issues. You also need to be able to identify quality workmanship and have access to subcontractors.
3. Do you have the skill? - project management is a skill it itself. Most women have quite good multi-task skill management and have had many years of dealing with delicate situations with both families and trades people.  But taking on a building project with legal, compliance, trade nuances and up to 30 subcontractors is quite a different story.
4. Do you really want to do it? - managing your own project can be personally rewarding as well as financially. It can also be extremely demanding emotionally, may end up costing you more than engaging the builder or an independent manager and can be very hard on home relationships.

Whether you pass the project to someone else to manage or manage the project yourself, it pays to know the basics of home improvement project management; and how the relationship with a project manager works.

In this Project Management section we look at home renovation or remodeling project management basics:

• Relationships between Homeowner and Project Manager
• Typical building project tasks
• Tips for managing your own home renovation or remodeling project
• Benefits of using your designer to manage your project
• Choosing a building contractor
• Types of building contractors
• Types of building agreements

Back to Top

Related Articles

Design Your Own Bathroom

Using Scale Paper For Bathroom Design

Bathroom Decorating Tips Using Mirrors And Lighting

DIY Bathroom Remodeling Hazards

DIY Bathroom Remodeling Hazards - Part 2

Luxury Bathrooms With Soaking Bathtubs

Choosing Your Bathroom Medicine Cabinet

Small Bathroom Remodeling Design