Gorilla and Mushroom Renovation

Then there is the need to seek market pricing… to see if you are being quoted a reasonable price for your renovation needs.

Take for example, flooring. Go to a contractor that only do wetworks and flooring to get a quote for floor only, and you will likely be able to find out the floor area to cover in square feet and the cost of the tiles and workmanship.

Once you got that, take out the yellow pages, make a few calls to a few other contractors. If they are willing to entertain phone queries, make the same enquiries you did earlier. One company I know who is willing to entertain phone queries is White Horse.

Strategy 3, use the yellow pages, it is your best friend in the world. Do a few calls to the specialty shops, and make enquires, then you will know what the specialist are charging, and see if the renovation quotations you get are about the market rate, , you will more or less be able to gauge whether the price quoted to you by your ID is reasonable or not.
The same can be done for carpentry and electrical works.
You can also make enquires about the pricing of electrical works when you are shopping for lights. Many of these light shops do cater electrical services when requested.

Once you decided on a 'reasonable' price comfortable to your pocket, then request to see their show house or at least a flat that they are currently renovating to see if their workmanship is up to your acceptable standards.

This can vary from individual to individual. Some good examples, visiting some of the on-going projects of the recommended IDs in the renovation forums, what was deemed reasonable workmanship by some of the forummers, did not agree with our pre-conception of what good workmanship is about.

Strategy 4, request to see their on-going renovation project first. This is to gauge their workmanship. If you feel their renovation workmanship is not up to your personal acceptable standard, there is no point in going on with the discussions, as you will not likely be engaging them for your renovation works.


Now the next important step, is to separate renovation WANTs and NEEDs. More on that tomorrow... 8D

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