Refacing Cabinets, Part 1
I’m about midway through a cabinet refacing project and I can tell that this is going to take several intallments to discuss. I’ll include some photos of the work as we go along. I’m optimistic the project is going to turn out well but an old friend of mine once told me the definition of an optimist was “someone without much experience”. Basically the more you know the more you know that can go wrong.
In a former life I had a contracting company and an engineering company, so my approach echoed my years of experience in the construction fields. I first developed a description of the project incorporating as much detail as I could. At the very least it included which cabinets were going to be refaced. And in my case I want some wood mirror frames changed out to matched the new cabinet doors and to update the cabinets in two room we wanted to add legs to the cabinets to make them look more like furniture.
I listed when I wanted the project to begin, requested desired deposit amounts, and asked for a breakdown of cost (as much as they would provide). Breakdowns describe steps or pieces of the construction that if you want to change or delete at a later date the breakdown will give you cost. The rule of thumb I always assumed was that in a deduct (where you delete something from a project) you got half of the value. And in an add you paid twice the value. If you think you might want additional work or products supplied get pricing for those adds up front. You’ll see why as my saga unfolds.
So with my description of work, request for references, request for pricing breakdown and any other parameters that I want to define, like timeframe, all written down to provide each contractor the same information to base there bid, I called six contractors that I found in the phonebook and on the internet.
All six needed to visit the house to look at the work in order to give me a price based on the condition they were going to be installed in. Two of the six wanted me to measure the cabinets and were going to give me a ballpark price over the phone. I thanked them for there time and declined their offer. It wasn’t like they were all busy in the first part of 2010 with the economy in the dumper.
The first and the largest cabinet refacing/kitchen/bath remodeler showed up looked at my project description, spent some time measuring cabinets, rolled out his samples, gave me one of their elaborate brochures, ran his calculator for a while and then took a piece of letterhead out and wrote a number down $9,500 and then for emphasis he circled the number. I asked for my breakdown information, he said he would provide it after we enter a contract. This wasn’t the info I requested and the price…I really didn’t know if that was a good price or not, but I did know that if it was, I wouldn’t be doing this project now.
The next contractor did the same general routine but this time gave me some breakdown for each of the bathrooms we were going to do. I was suprised that each of these two contractors could give me pricing right then and there because some of the things like the mirror frames was not part of a typical project. Nonetheless this contractor’s price was $7,900. A full $1,600 cheaper then the first contractor.
The third contractor came collected information and said he would email his bid.
And the last contractor did the same thing, took information, showed us his samples and said he would get back to us. He specifically said he would have to contact his supplier regarding the mirror frames and the legs which were unusual. He also wanted me to have his list of references so I could talk with them prior to getting his pricing. I’m not going to spend any time checking references until I know if this contractor has provided a bid that I’m interest in.
The third contractor after several calls proding him to give me a price, quote me a price over the phone that was $6,950. This was getting down around the $5,000 price that I thought it might be.
The last contractor stalled me even longer telling me that his supplier from Canada was not getting back to him. He added that while he was frustrated the products he gets from them are both excellent quality and very competitive. After another week he came back to me with a price $2,000 cheaper than the third contractor, with a very complete description of work, with the breakdowns I had requested. How could this be? I called all the references he provided (about 25) and most not only gave him a good references most sounded like they wanted to adopt him. I checked more with the Better Business Bureau. I checked for his prior business…all checked out to be believable.
Remember when I said to ask for pricing for possible adds to the project? We asked for pricing on granite countertops and he had a good number for that. All total the contract was agreed to for about the same price as the third contractor, including the granite. Less than most of the numbers I received for cabinet refacing alone. This contractor also wanted the least amount up front. If the project turns out good I’ll tell you who he is, but for now I’ll call him contractor 4.
That’s the end of part 1, I’ll write the second part tomorrow.
Tags: cabinet refacing, options to replaceing cabinets, refacing, updating cabinets