How remodeling more than one room can save money

Most homeowners who decide to remodel their kitchen or bathroom would actually like to fix up a few more rooms while they’re at it. Yet they tend to put off the second and third rooms until later, figuring they’ll get to each one as they can afford it.

Let me plant a little bug in your ear: You’ll save substantial money—and a little time—if you do all of your remodeling at the same time.

Before you ask your design/build professional to renovate just your kitchen or just your bathroom, consider:

•For every job, your design/build contractor will cover your floors to protect them; apply for city permits; set up a giant trash bin and otherwise get ready for the work to begin. At the end of the job, he’ll take it all down and clean everything up.

Then, when you’re ready for the next project, he’ll bring all of that stuff back over to your house and put it back up. Each time, you will pay for the contractor’s time and rental fees. Why not just do that once and save the money?

•The job involving multiple rooms is bigger than a one-room remodel, but each piece of a large job will go quicker if the contractor can do them all together.

The day the painters come, for instance, they can paint all of the rooms instead of coming back multiple times. Same goes for the plumber, the electrician and the carpenter. Paying for a single, longer visit is usually cheaper and always quicker than springing for several shorter, single-job appearances.

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•Your designer will do a better job of making sure the colors, textures and styles of your rooms flow from one to the other if he or she can design them all at once.

It’s hard to keep a consistent look throughout the house if you redo one room at a time. In fact, a designer working just on your living room might “match” it to a dining room that you later want to change. That will interrupt the flow.

•Let’s face it; a remodeling project can upset a family’s daily routine.

Grouping your projects into a single job will almost certainly shorten the length of a job compared with having rooms done one by one. So your lifestyle will suffer a shorter disruption.

•If you’re taking your family out of the house to live in a residence hotel or at grandma’s home during the renovations, your stay might be slightly longer during a whole-house renovation, but you’ll only be imposing one time.

•Remodeling a kitchen and a bathroom together—two rooms your family uses every day—is especially smart. They’ll both be out of commission at the same time, but they’ll also both be put back together. So the inconvenience is cut in half.

•Your contractor might discount the price on a multi-room job compared with the single-room estimate.

Plus, contractors are busy. If you can get the guy you really want to commit to a project, pile the work on while he has you on his calendar.

Do you want to remodel once, or do you want to start over again and again? Ask your design/build contractor to sit down with you and calculate the cost and time savings if you combine your projects.

Jeb Breithaupt, B. Arch., MBA, has been president of JEB Design/Build in Shreveport since 1983. You can contact him at 318-865-4914 or by visiting www.jebdesignbuild.com.