In-Law Home Improvement Project Take Two

In the position of being the lead laborer, and work decision maker, or even the project manager of remodeling a kitchen, dining room, bathroom and hallway for my in-laws I was placed on a specific time frame (out of necessity – summer vacation as a teacher) with my in-laws controlling the budget. Scope creep in this project would be inevitability, simply due to the size and variables of the project itself. Fortunately, I wasn’t in charge of the budget for this particular project, so when an instance of a variable like being short on material would happen (bad estimation) my father in-law would be approached by me to purchase more material. On the flip-side of this, when my father in-law (a project manager by profession) would begin to make comments concerning overages, I knew “the client” was getting concerned about scope creep. At this point is when I would become better at estimating material needs by checking and double checking square footage or length and so on.

This whole experience was a unique one for me, because it was such a major undertaking, unlike many other small home improvement projects I had already experienced. This was the first time I was not in control of the budget, by being responsible for purchasing materials with my own money based on my own estimates. When I would do a small home improvement project at my house and I would run into overages I would curse and swear I had things right, but in the end I was the only one accountable to the monster of scope creep, unless it was my wife that wanted to change something (fortunately she almost always defers to me). In the case of my in-laws project, there were two “clients” sometimes with separate ideas and not always communicated in the open and still only one controller of the budget. This sometimes led to some fun conversations when both “clients” were not available for lunch or dinner meetings to discuss changes or progress. Ironically, in a home improvement project of this size and importance (family) there were sometimes instances of three “visions” of what things should look like or how things should be done, especially when there were outside contractors involved (counter tops and material deliveries). Fortunately, my in-laws would usually defer to my opinion on processes or even designs, because I was the most experienced with these issues. However, there were some times I had to defer to the budget controlling “client” (father in-law), due to budget and time constraints, which were typically communicated quite clearly over lunch or dinner.

In all, communication was the key to the success of this project, typically done over lunch or dinner breaks to plan our/my next move or course of action and or to determine the need for any additional materials. Over a 6 week period of working 3-5 days a week for 8 -10 hours a day I was able to pull the project off in a lower cost of a professionally done project of this size. A typical kitchen remodel from the ground up can cost from 20-60 thousand dollars, but I was able to complete 3 rooms with tile, hardwood floors, re-plumb the kitchen, add light fixtures, and chair rails and trim for this very same amount of money. Looking back on this project I don’t see that it could have gone any smoother, simply because we had regular communication over lunch and dinner, where expectations and objectives were continually discussed. Also, since I am not a professional it was expected (at least by me) that there would be wrong estimates periodically and other mishaps leading to scope creep. Taking a thirty year old house and modernizing it is not without mishaps and contributors to change within a projects scope and design affecting the deliverables at any given milestone within the project. In the end, all stakeholders were satisfied with the outcome and results that this past summer I was asked to remodel their master bathroom and again SUCCESS!