Have you ever thought to yourself, why do I need a professional builder for my renovation project? Can’t I just manage my own build? Isn’t it as simple as calling up all the trades, getting them to rock up and do their job? I could save money by just managing the build myself, right? Wrong!
This idea is what leads many homeowners into a false sense of security, thinking that managing their own project will be easy, but it’s not. Coordinating and supervising the entire construction process takes time and energy that most people don’t have and finding quality trades through a quick Google search is like finding a needle in a haystack. And with so many different trades to manage, you’ll fall into the trap of hiring the one that’s available and not the one that’s going to provide you with quality workmanship, turning your dream project into a nightmare.
Not Earning Money Is The Same As Spending It
The reality is, you will end up losing income from having to take time away from your job to manage your project, when you could use that income to pay a professional to do what they do best, so you can go back to doing the job you do best.
If You Don’t Pay For Convenience, You’ll Substitute It With Stress
Convenience or a massive headache, you end up paying either way. But with a professional builder working on your project, you’ll be paying for a successful outcome with minimal stress. There’s an old saying that goes ‘Time is money, but money can’t buy time’. We beg to differ because you can pay a professional to manage your project and you will get your time back
Managing your own project means you are heavily relying on your trades to do the right thing, and unfortunately, not all do. With a professional builder, you gain access to their entire network of trades, meaning they’ve done the brunt work for you and have selected only the most trustworthy, professional people to work on your project. Not only that, but you also benefit from your builder’s industry experience and can trust that they have the knowledge required to complete your project to a high standard.
When managing the project yourself, if something goes wrong, it will leave you pointing the finger at one of your trades, who will be pointing their finger at someone else. Ultimately, no one will be willing to take responsibility and you’ll be the one having to fork out the money to fix the problem. If you were to use a professional builder who comes with guarantees and warranties, there would be someone who takes responsibility for all the trades and ensures that certain situations don’t become problems in the first place.
In South Australia, you are allowed to manage your own build as an owner-builder but you still need to ensure that each one of your trades has their appropriate building indemnity insurance policies in place for their scope of work. Which a lot of the time, does not happen. What this means is that if you sell your home within 5 years of completing your project or build, you’ll be selling it with no warranty. If your potential buyers find this out, it will cost you thousands from your sale price.
DIY = Distress and Disaster
In this age of DIY crazes, homeowners are often excited to get hands-on with their renovation project and do things themselves to cut costs, which leads them to think of just managing a whole project themselves too.
This excitement diminishes all too quickly once they are trying to juggle their project on top of their full time job which leaves them feeling burnt out. Without a professional builder on board to help manage the trades and organise the schedule, the project gets hit with constant delays and their budget blows out, adding even more stress.
Still Think Managing Your Own Project Is Cheaper?
You may save the builder’s margin on the costs for your project, but in turn, you’ll lose 20% of your income due to juggling two full-time jobs and you’ll be paying retail prices for your trades which can be up to 20% more than what a builder will pay. You’ll discover the subpar trades you hired have made mistakes and you’ll struggle to get them to come back and fix it. And on top of all that, you’ll be left with poor workmanship that needs to be redone.
A great example of this is from an experience we’ve had ourselves:A past client of ours wanted to complete some of the work themselves by painting the ceiling once all other building work was complete. They painted five coats of paint on the ceiling, and it was still patchy. They couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, so they sought our advice and we organised for one of our professional painters to come and have a look.. After inspecting the DIY job, the painter told him that it was painted completely wrong; it was rolled too dry and the paint had all stippled. The painters had to start from scratch, adding a new undercoat and another two final coats to fix it.
This DIY job ended up costing our client hours of his time in manual labor and the cost of having a professional painter fix his mistake.
This is a story we hear all too often in many different scenarios! . You can avoid this and more by knowing the 6 Essential Things You Must Do For A Successful Home Renovation. Download our free guide here to discover more.
