Years ago, I was in the film business and the rule of thumb on all projects was, "Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two." This has since turned out to be pretty much true in all endeavors. But in home remodeling, depending on who you get, that may turn out to not be the case.
In August, I reached out to DFW Improved to get a quote on completely remodeling my kitchen. I foolishly thought that this would be the fast part and the actual construction would take forever. Turns out this is completely reversed and for good reason. Their sales rep (Debra Fitzhugh) came out to the house to get a feel for the scope of work. We talked a lot. This would be a common occurrence throughout the project. At one point I asked her, "Within $10,000, how much do you think this will cost?" She gave me a number that turned out to be pretty much exactly what the final initial estimate was. I was impressed.
This was a real learning experience for me. Several years ago, I had my bathroom remodeled and that was a disaster. The prep meetings were brief, the communication was terrible, and the people doing the work frequently were not given the correct instructions from the project manager. None of that happened here. In the school of measure twice, cut once, the sales rep, their designer (Tiffany Confer), and their cabinet guy (Evan Maier) all spent multiple hours with my wife and I going over everything. Cabinets, counters, tile, fixtures, options, colors, backsplash, lights, counter edges, sinks, electrical, drawers, even grout colors. Their cabinet guy even came by my house and spent an hour with me going over the first draft of his cabinet drawings while we went wall by wall making adjustments to his blueprints real time. We probably spent seven to eight weeks just working on the design and it was the best spent time ever. You may come to the project with 100 photos from Pinterest and YouTube videos. But until you plan it out in your space, you have no idea if the things you want will even fit. I suggest that everyone who shows up to the design meeting at least agrees principle with what it is you want. Don't wait until that meeting to talk about it. Be prepared.
Once the designs were final and signed off on, we were assigned a project manager (Cole Standridge) who took over and scheduled all of the worker bees. Remember the communication issues I had with the bathroom? Gone. Our PM was at our house every single day. We discussed timelines, next steps, made adjustments and modifications and we even had a chat channel between him, our sales rep, and us to keep everyone up to date minute by minute. We talked a lot. It was great.
Once the work began, I was continually impressed by the quality of each and every contractor that worked on the job. Demolition, electrical, plumbing, sheet rock, tiles, paint prep, paint, countertops, everyone. They were all exceedingly diligent and productive. The level of detail that they paid to their work was astounding as there were numerous times someone would be working on something that I didn't even know needed to be done. Our PM frequently would point out something to adjust or fix that I just didn't see until he showed it to me.
How long did the construction part take? I estimated it would take two months, and it was much less than that and, in the end, the final product was much better than I imagined it in my head.
Was it cheap? No. I didn't expect it to be. Was it what I budgeted? Yes. Was every additional charge along the way discussed, documented, justified, and agreed upon? Yes. Was the work professionally done by fast, dedicated, skillful, friendly people? Yes. Was it fast? All in all, the part I expected to be slow was fast and the part I ignorantly expected to be fast was slowed down for our benefit.
In conclusion, I fully recommend DFW Improved for your next project. I have a handful of projects I want to do with them myself over the next few years. read more