As a rule, we can fix minor “cosmetic problems” in the apartment with our own hands - many people know how to whitewash ceilings, glue wallpaper, change sockets and even lay tiles. But self-repair of the entire apartment is a difficult and long business.
It can be too costly: it is difficult to calculate the required amount of materials, you will have to work in your free time from your main job - which will not benefit either her or you (when to rest?). Major repairs are best left to the professionals.
How to choose a repair team that will do everything efficiently and on time and will not make you fork out for an unexpectedly large sum? It's good when there are relatives, friends or acquaintances who have already dealt with one of the teams or firms, are satisfied with the result and are ready to recommend excellent craftsmen! What if you have to search on your own?
Search for builders on the Internet: pitfalls
Have you decided to look for contractors via the Internet? There are good firms and skilled private apartment renovation teams, but how not to make a mistake with the choice? Learn a few tips on how to find the right ones.
Note if the contractor is asking for an advance payment. If so, beware: scammers can disappear with your money and you will never find them. Prepayment - only for materials for repairs, and even then - if you do not intend to purchase them literally together with the contractor!
Immediately see if the contractor concludes an agreement with the customer. In case of any disputable situations, the contract will be the only proof that these people did the work for you.
It is not there - you can ask for a damaged interior, as they say, "from Pushkin." For serious contractors, the contract is concluded for a legal entity.
Another sign of a conscientious contractor is the ability to pay by bank transfer.
Try to familiarize yourself with the portfolio of the company / team. If the gallery is presented on the site and looks too attractive, make sure that this is not a 3D visualization (the interior looks perfect, there are no people in it, the weather is sunny) and that photos are not stolen from other, possibly even foreign sites (check using the Google-Search service by pictures).
Private teams may not have a portfolio at all - feel free to ask for contacts of previous customers, call them. Professionals have nothing to hide!
Find out about the composition of the brigade. Ideally, you should get to know the designer, foreman, and employees before signing a contract. If two people show up to you and introduce themselves as "masters of all trades" - this is not the case!
A plumber, an electrician and a plasterer rolled into one is a cyclist swimming a marathon distance (exceptions are so rare that they almost never happen). A good apartment renovation master is a specialist worker who knows exactly his job to the subtleties.
A serious company or the right team will never give you the full cost of repairs if they have not yet seen the object and have not carried out the necessary measurements and calculations. When making an estimate together with the foreman / foreman / representative of the company, please note that the final cost may be higher than the original one (purchase of building materials, breakage of tools in the process of work).
The inattentive pays more
If you want to get a really good apartment renovation, do not be lazy - pay attention to the following points.
Get into the budget. Make sure that all the necessary work is indicated in it - otherwise it will start later: “and who will pay for the skirting boards?”, “We still hung the door here ...” - and the total cost of repairs will be more than previously stated. Room for scams!
You may not know exactly how much the skirting boards cost and how the installation of the door is paid - nothing will prevent cunning craftsmen from indicating a larger amount, the difference - in their pocket. The smaller footage of the premises is indicated, the discount of the contractor who purchases building materials from the supplier is “forgotten”, the “left” items in the estimate (for example, you do not have to pay for the installation of scaffolding) - all this increases the cost of work! The amounts in the estimate and in the contract must match.
Control the "hidden" side of the work - rough surface finishing, electrical wiring and heating. If there are “jambs”, the subsequent alteration will hit the wallet hard. The rough finish of the bathroom is cement plaster, other rooms are plaster, fix this in the contract, the price of the finish depends on the type of plaster.
Feel free to invite technicians from the organization responsible for the operation of the building to take over the engineering communications and put their signatures on the acceptance certificate. If an accident occurs - fire, short circuit, pipe break - the team or the company will be held responsible for poor quality work.
There are no trifles and delays (“then it will equalize itself”) in repair work! Do you want to “admire” protruding seams, loose joints, inaccurately pasted wallpaper, unevenly painted surfaces, crookedly installed switches and sockets in the wrong places?
Do you love skewed doors and non-closing windows? Be sure to track how the work is done in these areas. Describe any shortcomings and set a deadline for their correction.
The final act of acceptance of all works must be signed by the contractor and you. The date of signing is the beginning of the warranty period for the work (the contract must contain information about this period!). Until the designated date, employees are required to eliminate all shortcomings and defects - and do it free of charge.
How to choose a construction team for home renovation? What to look for when choosing a repair company?
So, it's time for repairs in your apartment. This happens sooner or later in every family. In this article, we will consider the case when you will not do the repair yourself. That is, there will be no advice on how to do this or that action, for example, how to glue wallpaper or lay a warm floor. Therefore, we will only consider how to choose a respectable construction company that will repair an apartment with high quality, without a headache on your part. In order to choose a construction team, you also need some knowledge, which we will consider in this article.
In what cases it is necessary to hire specialists: for example, during major repairs, installation of underfloor heating, redevelopment and in other cases.
Relying only on your own strength is not always good, since one person cannot be an expert in all areas, and you risk not only spoiling the finishing materials intended for repair, but also causing damage to your apartment, the correction of which will cost a lot of money.
Perhaps, then you will have to not only hire workers, but also buy new finishing materials. As you know, the miser pays twice, so let's entrust the repair to professionals. It remains only to decide how to "calculate" these professionals among the many companies and repair agencies.
Rules for choosing a construction company for apartment renovation
- First, ask around friends, relatives and acquaintances who have survived the renovation. Perhaps they will suggest a good company. If one of the firms received several positive reviews at once, then you can safely cooperate with it (if the price suits you, of course).
- If there is no one to consult with or friends disagree, then you will have to personally talk with representatives of several companies. You need to be prepared for these conversations, think in advance about the questions that should be asked, and about those little things that are worth paying attention to.
- The first thing that catches your eye is the appearance. The representative of the company and the workers must be neat and well dressed. Since good specialists earn a lot, they take care of themselves.
- Also pay attention to the smell: no one should smell of alcohol, drinking people usually emit a specific unpleasant smell.
- After inspecting the house, ask the foreman to draw up an estimate: what costs await you, what work needs to be done. Otherwise, you run the risk of falling into a trap: they call you a low price, and in the process of repair they screw up something that was not taken into account earlier. The estimate will protect you from this. In addition, having a printed version of prices and services from each company will make it easier for you to make a choice.
- Agree on the deadlines for the completion of the work - this is also one of the most important factors that will affect the choice, but keep in mind that usually the deadlines are still slightly pushed back.
- Ask to see other objects of work, if any. Don't trust the photos as they don't reflect the quality of the work and can be downloaded from the web.
- Pay attention to the tools, they must be neat, but not new, otherwise you can get to beginners, and this is always a risk.
- The work schedule is also important, there should not be a 2-hour break when everyone rests. Work should be organized in such a way that everyone takes turns resting.
- Ask the grandmothers at the entrance if they often have smoke breaks. By the way, use the same methods of monitoring repairs in your home. Feel free to control the situation.
Agree on whether you will buy finishing materials together or you will receive receipts.
Which firms fit all of these 10 items? A good option would be to choose the Trian company, which will make repairs to the apartment efficiently and on time. Most importantly, do not be afraid to ask, check, ask tricky questions. You entrust your house to the wrong hands, so let these hands be careful and tidy!
1. Preparatory stage.
Design. Any renovation starts with an idea. Many consider spending on a designer an unjustified excess, so they exclude his services first of all, creating a project on their own. Definitely, this way you will save a lot, but we still suggest that you contact the designers at least for advice. Show your concept to a specialist, he will help you avoid planning mistakes, decide on a color, tell you which elements you should pay attention to. Some designers work in the "specialist for an hour" format. It will cost you very little, and the result will be impressive.
Estimate. Many faced the problem when consumables run out at the right time during the repair process. Or vice versa, you finish finishing and find unpacked packages of plaster. This can be avoided by using various online calculators.
For example, you can download the VOLMA mobile application and use it to calculate the amount of materials needed. The technology is simple and clear: you specify the parameters of your apartment, and the program calculates the volume of necessary consumables, up to the number of self-tapping screws. For example, if you are planning to build a drywall wall, you need to specify the surface area, the humidity level of the room, the wishes for the fire resistance of the structure and the plans for the placement of communications, and the calculator will calculate the potential costs and return the necessary shopping list.
Time. When planning repairs, try to minimize the amount of "wet" work. For example, a cement-sand screed can dry up to a month. If you are renovating your apartment and renting another apartment at the same time, this can cost a pretty penny. Our advice is to study the market. Many companies offer high-tech mixtures that will reduce time costs. For example, a self-leveling floor mixture sets within a week.
2. Logistics.
Procurement. If at the planning stage you know how many kilograms of putty you will need, then you just need to buy it in bulk. Firstly, you will save a lot, and secondly, most hypermarkets offer free shipping for large volumes.
Take a look at the promotions of construction stores. It's no secret that many of them have various discount systems, as well as loyalty cards with a discount for newcomers, as well as buyers with a large purchase budget.
Construction garbage. You can also save money on waste disposal. Cooperate with neighbors who are also busy arranging their homes by ordering one truck for two.
By the way, scrap metal and electrical appliances collection points can take out the old stove and refrigerator on their own, and sometimes even pay extra for it.
3. The choice of a team of workers.
The first impulse of any person who wants to save money is to do everything himself. You can really glue wallpaper, paint walls and even build a drywall partition on your own (including with the help of video tutorials on Youtube), but it is still worth paying for professional construction teams for plumbing and electrics. It is advisable to choose those who have state registration (IP, LLC) and can provide a guarantee for their services.
A little trick - transfer part of the work to the cold season. This is the “off season” when you can count on a good discount from the work team.
4. Finishing.
Walls. In addition to wallpaper and finishing puttying followed by painting, there are still a lot of finishing options that may not only seem interesting, but also save a lot of money.
On the Internet, you can find many examples of the use of ordinary plaster as a decorative one. Ordinary, you can get excellent analogues of Venetian or textured plaster, and sometimes you can create real masterpieces. Someone uses special rollers, a special application technique, improvised materials (sponges, plastic films and even a broom).
Another option for the original wall decoration is the use of OSB-plates. This is compressed wood chips, the cost of which is about 200 rubles per 1 sq.m. It gives the walls a finished and pleasant look of wood paneling, which does not need additional painting and wallpapering.
Or you can generally abandon traditional finishes in favor of loft-style interiors - brick and concrete walls during such repairs are not finished with plaster, but simply treated with water-based varnish. Thus, you can get a spectacular repair for minimal money.
Floor. It is believed that the most budgetary and utilitarian flooring option is linoleum. It is easy to install, moisture resistant and easy to clean. However, pitfalls can also arise here.
First of all, for linoleum flooring it is necessary to have a very even base. And if the creaking floors of old Khrushchev houses are brought to this level, then a square meter of the “pie” will cost many times more than the installation of laminate floors. Speaking of violins. They can be removed in a very budgetary way. Some craftsmen "abundantly" stretch with self-tapping screws. Others drill a hole in the area of \u200b\u200bthe “noisy” lag and put mounting foam there, filling the space and creating something like a pillow in the “sore” place. It is clear that this is only a "patch", but with total savings, it can help.
Ceiling. If you decide to save on the ceiling, choose a stretch. Its installation takes place in a matter of hours, and the work is much cheaper than alignment.
Window. Windows are the weakest link in the energy profile of a building. Despite their constant improvement, they do not stop letting too bright and hot rays into the room in summer and losing precious heat in the cold season. Therefore, it is not worth saving on the quality of windows. When choosing a window solution, it is necessary to pay attention not only to the profile (of course it matters), but also to the double-glazed window. Remember that 80% of a window is a double-glazed window - and a lot depends on its quality and characteristics. Cheap double-glazed windows will allow heat to pass through, and all that you can save on buying and installing windows will soon be found on your heating bills.
Each master, for sure, has hundreds more ideas and life hacks on how to save money on repairs. We will be glad if you share them in the comments to this article.
We deliberately started a conversation about how to choose a team for repairing an apartment or a house not with a finisher (he would hardly be objective) - designer Nagamov Lev Borisovich acts as our today's expert. Why designer? Yes, because it was through him that a large number of construction teams passed, the work of which he carried out architectural supervision. Stroyka. by I am sure that these recommendations will be useful to everyone, because there is no person who has not used the services of a finisher at least once in his life.
The selection criteria for such masters is rather subjective. Someone needs it to be fast and cheap, someone can be more expensive, but with the highest quality ... And then, what is considered quality? For one customer, evenly glued wallpaper is already happiness, for another, a bubble on the same wallpaper is a knife to the heart. All of the recommendations below apply to a typical customer: with an average income, sane and moderately demanding.
« Asking the builder if he will do it quickly, efficiently and inexpensively is pointless, he will say: “Of course!” But for all the time of work, I met only two such teams.
That's why I want to talk about all those "calls", nuances that you can't miss if you want to live in a repair done well and for a reasonable price.».
To get started, look at brigade specialists. If one or two people say that they will do the whole range of work themselves, this is a reason to be wary.
“I admit that there are masters of all trades who will install plumbing, lay tiles, and cover with drywall. But it is extremely rare for a “multi-machine” to perform all these works equally well: most likely, this is a specialist who painted a little, glued a little, laid a little tile, etc. Do not expect brilliant results from him.
Another option is when the team says that they are only engaged in finishing, and look for an electrician or plumbing specialist yourself. This is also fraught with trouble. For example, the wallpaper is pasted, but the socket does not work. Who will be responsible? Electrician? He's already gone. You have to redo it, and this is an additional cost. And what if these wallpapers are also discontinued? In general, a lot of nerves.
Therefore, as I said in, there should always be someone to ask. If the brigade is complex, they themselves will find whose "jamb" and who to correct. For the same reason, I warn the customer to hire all specialists separately in order to save money.».
By the way, with regard to savings, service prices and other monetary issues, then Lev Borisovich does not recommend putting them at the forefront and choosing a team only according to its price list. The prices of the masters at the moment differ not very significantly, not at times. And cheapness is often only on paper.
“You see that one master electrician has a point worth 4 dollars, and another has 10, take it cheaper, then it turns out that the one with 4 did not turn on the strobes, and so on. After all, it’s like: a competent estimator is able to make an offer attractive, and not leave his own in the loser ”.
Ask where did the brigade come from. If you are from the periphery, and you are a demanding metropolitan client with an interesting design project, then it is better to refuse the services of these guys.
Separately, it is worth touching on situations when builders work with director or foreman. Other things being equal, such a team will cost more. Why? In the case of a construction organization, there are additional costs for an accountant, office rent, etc. True, if the team is not satisfied, you can ask the director to change it.
In the case of the foreman, he takes up to half of the total amount for himself. For example, if you paid two rubles for plastering work, the master himself could well receive only a ruble, so you hardly have the right to demand two rubles from him.
If there is designer supervision, then the foreman is often not needed at all. Perhaps, earlier its functions also included providing the object with building materials, but now everything is delivered on a call, at least in large cities. And the foreman will not insure against fraud, because both he and the builders can attribute something.
“Renovating an apartment is very similar to repairing a car. If it is clear that the client does not understand, a rare builder will resist the temptation to exaggerate the costs: he did not see it, he did not discuss it, he did not consider it.
It's interesting that age of builders also needs to be taken into account.
« If there are young lads in the brigade, no older than 27, then they usually have a foreman, which, as we found out, is fraught with overpayments. Often these are inexperienced craftsmen, the quality of their work is low. The rates for such teams are usually lower. It's up to you to choose what is more important - price or quality.
Middle-aged and elderly people (50-60 years old) are also not the best option. It would seem that a lot of experience has been accumulated. But! They do everything the old fashioned way, they don't want to learn something, they don't know how to work with new materials.
Often these are those who did not take place in some other profession, that is, they are forced to work as a builder. They are offended by the whole wide world, no matter how much you pay them, everything is not enough, and repairs are hello from the 90s!
As with any other service, it is important recommendations but evaluate them carefully. For example, if you are told that the team did an excellent job a month ago, the value of such a recommendation is low: too little time has passed. The same is true if a “satisfied client” lives somewhere in the regional center, and your apartment is in the capital: both builders and customers from the periphery have quality criteria for repair work that are “inferior” to those in the capital.
If the brigade was engaged in offices, then it is not worth letting them into the apartment, and if only with apartments, trusting them with a house is also not entirely correct. In the decoration of each type of room has its own nuances.
The conclusion is simple: you need to believe the recommendations that are given for an object similar to yours in purpose and location, plus if at least six months have passed since the repair. When there are no recommendations at all, then either your apartment is a “prototype” or the previous ones were.
“It is of great importance schedule builder. And here is this? Yes, very simple. If builders come for a few hours, it means that they have parallel facilities, this will at least delay your repair: instead of the promised 4 months, you can safely count on six months, or even longer. The opposite situation - the team sits from early morning until late at night. It would seem great, the guys are working hard ... But no, this is also bad. This means that working out is important for them: speed is in the first place here, quality, of course, in the second. The optimal schedule is “like people”,from 9 to 17 (plus or minus), necessarily a day off. Then the builders work calmly and, as a rule, well..
Concerning construction time, then if there are 5-6 people in the team, the repair of an apartment up to 100 square meters should last about 4 months, if 2-3 builders - up to six months.
“If the deadlines are initially overstated, this does not mean that your repairs will be done with incredible quality and scrupulousness. Don't be fooled! This means that the brigade has several more objects. In this case, as a rule, no matter how you come, 1-2 people work.”
Knowledge of building codes- an optional requirement, rather an additional plus.
“Often, repairs without designers take place with a change in layout, as they say, by eye: they destroyed it here, they built it up here. And now, I'm sorry, you have to go into the toilet sideways, the builder doesn't care much - he can't live here. Yes, we decided together, but what is the demand? A modification for a fee. A competent builder will always warn, which means he will save you money..
Knowledge of materials is also a plus. It is impossible to be able to work with everything that is on the market. But, for example, he should know how tiles differ from porcelain stoneware. Brave statements such as buy what you want, put everything (glue, hang) - a reason to be wary.
“With and without a design project, if you can see that the builder is thinking, asking questions, that he cares, you can work with such a person”.
By the way, if you have a new building, ask the finishers how the effects of house shrinkage will be minimized. If the master does not see much difference, then be prepared that in six months or a year the plasterboard ceiling will crack, the plaster will crumble, etc.
Contrary to the prevailing stereotype, the nationality of the builder does not matter much. As well as the workload of the brigade.
“I know a lot of hacks who are constantly busy. If one brigade is ready to start work even tomorrow, and the second one has to wait three months, this does not mean anything. All the criteria that were described above are important..
To facilitate the process of choosing a team, our expert suggests using a questionnaire in which each of the points can be estimated at a certain number of points, conditionally, of course: if any point is important to you, you can “add” points to it, the main thing is that in total it turns out 100. When talking with builders, put points in the questionnaire, then in addition to rosy speeches, you will also have a real picture.
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