Insider secret revealed ... Why "Sweating the Small Stuff" is Essential on Home Makeover Projects
Thomas Edison is one of the most famous American inventors with more than 1,000 patents to his name. A well-known quotation that I'm sure you’re familiar with and which is ascribed to Edison is "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration". Edison recognised the significance of “sweat”.
And he's not the only stand out public figure who has identified this key ingredient of success in life. Jeff Bezos also emphasised “sweat” in his final letter to shareholders, released earlier this year.
It can get boring when someone keeps repeating themselves ... but for today's deep dive, it's a risk worth taking and so I'm going to expand on a topic I've already mentioned a few times in past Blog Posts.
On Home Makeover Projects, we MUST sweat the small stuff.
“Stormin Norman” Schwarzkopf - a General in the US Military who served as the commander of United States Central Command, leading all coalition forces in the Gulf War in 1991, once said this : "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war". I suspect he would've had no idea just how apt that statement is in the context of Home Makeover Projects.
Let’s get stuck into the details.
At the core of this insider secret strategy, is the fact that to get what you want or need from your Home Makeover Project, you have to know what that is. In detail. No contractor, no matter how experienced they are, no matter how good they are, can guess what you need, want or like.
Why do details matter so much, let me explain using a simple example.
Let's use a shower room. Now what I'm going to share applies exactly the same to every component in the room.
The primary goal of your project, is to successfully deliver the Home Makeover to your complete satisfaction at the end, whatever that would mean for you - in this case, it's our imaginary shower room.
I'm going to randomly pick just one component in the room ... let's say it's the toilet itself.
In order to complete the room, your contractor - or plumber if you're appointing the sub-contractor yourself, would’ve had to purchase the toilet from a manufacturer or supplier, have it delivered to site, then install it, connecting it to water supplies and drainage pipework and finally, to turn on the water supply to make sure it functions as it should.
So how does the contractor or plumber know what toilet to supply and install. Well, someone - either you or your architect or interior designer (with your approval) - needs to have selected that toilet. This means providing the product name and model as well as any other relevant details - like size, if there are different sizes within a particular range and so on.
Note that, even when you appoint an architect or interior designer to guide you and support you, you still ultimately make the final decisions. Even when they make recommendations for particular products, they should defer to you to approve those product selections.
The reason you need to provide this level of detail is because of what happens when you don't - and that is likely to be bad for you. In this example, if you just say "provide and install one toilet", you will most likely get the cheapest toilet the contractor can find or, at best, the easiest one he can get his hands on. He’ll do that as the basis for winning the job by having the lowest overall cost. And that might be fine if you would have chosen that particular product yourself. But, in reality, it almost never is.
And the way this goes down, is you select the cheapest contractor based on their bid. Then the day comes when the contractor installs the new toilet in the shower room. You arrive on site, later that day and discover to your surprise and probably horror, a pink, plastic toilet.
Perhaps you should have told them what you wanted when you invited them to bid. Then you wouldn't be in this position, staring in disgust at this trashy, pink, monstrosity.
And the problem can only be solved in one of two ways ... either you pay for the contractor or plumber to replace the offending toilet with what you do want ... by doing what you should have done at the beginning and selecting a particular product or you accept that you'll be living with a pink, plastic toilet for the foreseeable future.
I mentioned that there are three stages when having made the effort to get into the detail up-front, at the beginning of the project, really pays off.
One of the biggest problems all Homeowners face, when embarking on a Home Makeover adventure, is uncertainty or unpredictability. Everyone knows how Home Makeovers often go wrong, go bad, run over budget and take much longer than planned. And that's why most Homeowners say that uncertainty and unpredictability are their greatest fear. It's often what stops them from even attempting a Home Makeover project.
And one of the root causes of that uncertainty and unpredictability, is a failure to engage with getting the details locked down right at the beginning of the project.
So, the first stage of the project, when sweating the detail matters, is during the design phase. Before the contractors get involved.
If you sweat the details during the design phase, you set yourself up for success throughout the project. You’ll contribute to certainty of future outcomes during the next two stages of the project.
Stage two is during the procurement stage - when you're bidding or negotiating with contractors or sub-contractors. In previous Blog Posts, I explained the importance of those details to be able to adequately compare different bids from competing contractors. The key point is that if your bid documentation - whether on the drawings and plans or in a detailed bid or tender analysis, has all the right details then, when you get bids and quotes from any contractor, sub-contractor or supplier, you’ll know that they have all based their prices on the same products and components.
Knowing this significantly reduces the risk of appointing the contractor with the lowest cost. Yes, there ARE other considerations when selecting your contractor. But having sufficient detail in the bid documents is the one that can cause the most impact. Especially a negative impact when you do not have enough details.
The third and most critical stage of the project, when sweating the details upfront pays off, is during the on-site, build phase. If you choose, select and specify as many components and products as possible, then there are two ways you benefit.
The first is that there will be no nasty surprises. General Schwarzkopf's statement rings true ... the details you "sweat in peace", the time before the project kicks off, "the less you bleed in war", when you and your contractor go head to head.
Having a reliable, clear, detailed, contract sum analysis that spells out those details means that if your contractor does install a pink, plastic monstrosity, you will have no problem pointing out the error, noting what should have been done and instructing them to fix the problem ... at their cost and in their own time.
The second is time. When you have to solve product and component related problems because they supplied and installed something not acceptable (whether it's down to you or to them), it's almost 100% certain you will lose time. It will take time for you to find the right product - even if it's only a few hours. It takes time to order the correct product – that could be another couple of hours. Then it takes time for the product to be delivered. And more often than not, having lost at least a couple of days, when the correct components arrive on site, the plumber isn't there to install them. No, the plumber has moved on to another project or two and can only get back to site a week later.
You can see how quickly, just a couple of instances like this, can add up to significant delays.
Earlier, I did say that there can be times when you can't or don't want to provide the details, select the products and components. That typically applies to either generic materials - like wallboard or plasterboard, or even to more complex technical elements - like a central heating or an air conditioning system.
In instances like this, there is a way to still get what you want or need without actually choosing a specific product. And the way to do that is to provide a "performance specification" for that component. This tells the contractor what the functional and performance requirements of the system or component needs to be. In the case of wallboard, you may just choose to identify when the wallboard needs to have a fire-resistance rating - that way the contractor can purchase any wallboard so long as it provides the required level of fire resistance.
Of course, it goes without saying … but I’ll say it anyway … you still need to provide those performance “details”. You can’t escape the details, just get over it and get on with it. Get sweating.
I really can't stress enough the importance of taking time and making an effort to get to grips with the details of the products and components you need or want on your home makeover projects. But it really is the only way to make sure you actually do get the successful end result you deserve.
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