Who Should Buy the Materials for Your Home Remodeling Project?
Hi, I’m Caleb with Dansie Design Build, and we’re talking about the difference between contractors purchasing the materials for a home remodel or a construction project, and homeowners purchasing the materials for their contractor to install for the project. So by the end of this video, you should be able to determine what’s the right fit for you and how to proceed with your project and have a great experience. Let’s jump right in.
What to Consider When Deciding Who Should the Project Products and Materials
There are four things to consider and understand when making this decision:
- Procurement and Installation Process
- Costs
- Impact on Schedule and Warranty
- What Contractors Lend Well to Each Process
Ordering construction materials can be a trick. There’s a lot of things that are incompatible with each other, and a lot of parts lists that can be incomplete. So, when you’re ordering materials, it’s important to really understand the entire list of items you’ll need in order to complete a project, as well as being able to make sure that all the items on that list will be compatible with each other.
Should a Contractor Buy the Home Remodel Materials?
Having a contractor purchase the materials will generally mean that there will be a markup on those materials. So the contractor will buy them for a certain price and charge an additional cost to supply those materials. In general, contractors will receive contractor pricing for the materials that they purchased from their suppliers. Suppliers are interested in maintaining these relationships with contractors because they’re repeat customers that come back for every project. Homeowners don’t have that, and so the priority with suppliers is generally very low. That is one benefit to having the contractor purchase the materials.
Contractors don’t always receive discounts though, and so the benefit to having a contractor purchase the materials and mark them up even though they don’t have a really great discount on the materials, is that they have the responsibility to make sure that those materials are the correct ones and that there’s the correct quantity or number of materials provided, and that they’re delivered at the right time in sequence to make sure that they can be installed. If the contractor miscalculates the quantity of materials that are delivered, then it’s his responsibility to make sure that the remaining materials are delivered in sequence and on time to continue with the project schedule.
Should the Homeowner Buy the Home Remodel Materials?
If the homeowner takes this responsibility and miscalculates the number of products or quantity of material that need to be provided or orders the incorrect product that’s incompatible with the other products on the project, it can really throw off the schedule and create scheduling delays and the need to come back to the project another day to do something that should have already been done, pushing other trade partners back later and later. This means that the cost will go up for those people because they’ll have to come back to the job site another time and do the work that they could have already previously completed on a prior date when they were originally there.
What Affects the Construction Schedule and Costs for a Home Project?
There are a lot of ways that a construction schedule can be disturbed and modified. One of these is, if the incorrect number of products comes, if we don’t have enough material on the job site to complete something in the time we scheduled to do it, also, if we have the incorrect products there we won’t be able to complete the work as fast as we were planning on originally, which will add more days which can add more labor hours, and that is an additional cost. It can also create the situation where we have to reschedule workers to come later, and they’ll probably have other projects that they’ve already scheduled and you’ll have to wait for them to finish those projects to come back to this one, all the meanwhile, we’re waiting for something that could be pretty small and could have been avoided.
Contractor Product and Material Warranty
After the construction’s over, the warranty’s also affected, any materials that are owner furnished are generally not covered in a warranty. So, if anything goes wrong with those materials or products, whether they’re light fixtures, faucets, countertops, cabinets, appliances, flooring, those typically are not going to be covered in a warranty. So the responsibility to pay for replacement material and labor on anything that’s defective is going to be the responsibility of the homeowner if they furnished that product. So, it is very beneficial to have the contractor furnish those items so that in the event that anything does happen with them, it’s covered under his warranty.
Organized and Seamless Home Remodeling Project
Contractors who are looking to provide a very organized and seamless experience are typically going to require that they provide all the materials, and that is so that they have control over the situation, and they also have the responsibility to make sure that things happen correctly. Contractors who are more flexible with what’s going on on the project or when things are happening, they will also have more flexibility as to who’s providing those things and any issues that arise during construction for the installation. If you’d like more information on remodeling your home or finishing your basement, you can review our website or request a project consultation.
