While finishing your basement to make it part of your homeâs living space might seem like a fairly simple task, it can lead to quite a disaster is handled incorrectly. Moreover, with the risks involved, it is best that you take the following things into consideration before you start.
Americans are known to spend around $120 billion every year on various home improvement projects, and finishing basements do account for a reasonable chunk of these projects. With the home improvement industry being so big, it becomes very important that you take utmost care in picking the professional that truly understands how to finish a basement.
Problems that involve contractors have generally ranked within the top 3 categories of customer complaints over the recent past. You should know that there are around half a million remodeling contractors within the US and about half of them shut shop every year, with approximately 90% of them closing down every 5 years. Estimates show that around half of the people who use professional help arenât satisfied with the work, and only about 20% of the people are completely satisfied with the results.
In looking for professional that understands how to finish a basement, you should be wary of the businesses that intend to rip-off their customers. These are the businesses that you might have heard of previously, or read about in websites, magazines, books, and other consumer protection manuals/guides. As per the Journal of Consumer Affairs, some of the most commonly noticed fraudulent practices involve:
* The use of deceptive pricing
* Misrepresenting the work that needs to be undertaken
* Misrepresenting the materials that are required to complete the task at hand
* Using low quality material while charging high
If you take some time in doing your home-work while following some basic guidelines, most pitfalls can be avoided. However, you must remember that the biggest risks are often the hardest to spot. These involve contractors that would come under the âbad good guysâ category. These consist of contractors that are mostly well intentioned, but simply do not have too much knowledge about what they are into. This could include bad business acumen, and/or inadequate relevant process knowledge. Either way, the end result would be your basement finishing project facing the brunt. Bad results would generally include:
* You spending a lot of money and the basement still feels like a basement upon completion
* Your contractor disappearing halfway through the job
* You having to bear expenses that your contractor did not foresee at the very onset
* You having to constantly urge your contractor to speed things up in order to finish as per schedule
* You having to pay $45,000 for work that should have cost $35,000
* You ending up being responsible for the mechanicsâ liens because the sub-contractors did not get paid
If you can manage to avoid the aforementioned scenarios, and if you contractor knows what he/she is doing, then you basement finishing project should ideally go through without too many problems. Also, while attempting to undertake the entire project on your own might seem tempting, you should know that it would involve a lot of knowledge as well as effort.
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