Amy D: Welcome to our special mini series called Home Truths. We’re gonna be talking about some common misconceptions in the world of renovating, and basically shine the light on how to avoid a stressful renovation. If you’re thinking about renovating or about to start, this is for you.

Juan – Coastal Trades: So welcome everybody to Home

Amy D: Truths.

Jane: no,

Amy D: This week is a really special bonus. Um, It’s Ask a Builder, and we’ve got Juan from Coastal Trades Collective. Thanks for joining us.

Juan – Coastal Trades: Thanks for inviting me.

Amy D: Are you ready for this?

Juan – Coastal Trades: well, hopefully, yeah. Um.

Amy D: We’ve got lots of questions for you. Okay. So the first one that we wanted to ask you

kind of information do you wish homeowners had ready before

asking you

to quote?

I think, the best situation is

Juan – Coastal Trades: when they know what they want in terms of not necessarily turning up with just like all the

architectural plans and structrual,

calcs, but, I suppose

having a clear idea of this is the space we want, the actual must-haves of their builds

like, need more space or

we absolutely have to have the patio done, or those kinds of things are

important, just so there’s a clear understanding of like, yeah, what they must have, what’s a luxury item, or a nice to have and, and obviously the budget as well. That’s the other thing really, if people, really kind of have a clear understanding on

what they’d like to spend or how much they think they should spend,

and if not then that’s really where we, start, is.

talking about that.

Amy D: So you go into that with them?

Juan – Coastal Trades: Yeah, absolutely. Um, unless they’re like, some people have that locked down or, you know,

got an idea of, you know,

of this is what we want to do because we want this return on investment

and we’ve been thinking about it and we don’t wanna spend more than 60 grand ’cause we think we’re never gonna get that back. But a, a lot of the time, eight outta 10 times people, they, they’re often coming to us just hoping that we give them a quote and that’s their budget, which is not, is not the right way around to do it.

Jane: I

are you usually the first port of call then? Are they kind of thinking, we’d like to do some work, we’ll call you guys, and then do you link them up with architects or do you do drawings in -house?

Juan – Coastal Trades: we’d like to be the first port of call. it works really well. That’s, where we are. We are trying to present ourselves, you know, as a kind of design build company. it’s obviously not the same for everyone. there’s plenty of builders out there that are just builders. and they probably, you know, in a sense got it harder because people are coming to them, maybe not with an idea or a plan you know, they haven’t spoken to an architect or anyone. then they’re kind of putting all that pressure on the builder to do all of that stuff, which yes, they’ll have an idea of how much it costs to build a house or how much it is for an extension, but not, necessarily skilled in talking about budgets. And they might only know their bit of the work as well.

Like, if they’re just a shell builder, they won’t really know necessarily how much it’s gonna cost to do the kitchen or the decorating is gonna cost, or, you know, they’re just not thinking about bits that sit outside the bit that they’re doing, because why should they? but yeah, like if people come to us first, that’s the ideal situation. But it, it depends. Sometimes, a lot of the times people have already spoken to an architect, which it can be good, it can be bad, Quite often it’s, they’ve spent a lot of money on drawings.

Amy D: Hmm.

Juan – Coastal Trades: They’ve had the structural calculations. They might have even had the detailed drawings drawn up.

Jane: Yeah.

Amy D: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: Crazy. ’cause they’ve spent like thousands at that point.

Amy D: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: if the

Jane: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: what they wanna spend or what they can spend or what is sensible to spend, they’re like, unpicking it going backwards.

And it’s just a really, like, not fun, is it doing it that way around. So,

Amy D: No,

Juan – Coastal Trades: and some,

Jane: It’s such a good point.

Juan – Coastal Trades: one’s doing that, which is, you know, a negative kind of thing for them because they’re like, oh architect drawn this beautiful property for us and you are saying actually gonna cost, you know, another a hundred grand more than our budget.

Um, It’s

Amy D: tricky though. we, we as you know, have the app and we have been using it with clients to kind of help them make, early design decisions so that they can kind of get in the right ball park, before

like you say, before doing even doing detailed design or going to planning and that

kind of thing. And for some it really works well and it’s like

Jane: Uh,

Amy D: take that information and, and, and work with it. But I think others, it’s like until they get the builder’s quote, they kind of just, it’s like you can’t believe it’s gonna be that much. Like even though

someone’s saying this

is how it breaks down.

This is, you know, it’s like you almost just don’t wanna face it. And you were saying yourself, Jane, that in your project at the

Jane: Yeah,

Amy D: just didn’t wanna face that final Number.

Jane: Until you hear it from the person who’s actually going to bill you, you kind of think that there’s another way around it. And I guess that’s the advantage, like you say, Juan, of going, being the first person, if you’re genuinely talking real numbers and you’re guiding them because you know yourself what things are going to cost to build.

Juan – Coastal Trades: it’s just the most sensible process to do it, I think. And it’s, you know, essentially it’s the same as what, what you guys are doing with Home Notes is people are able to build the budget before they’ve spent the money on even talking to an architect and we do come across people that have, they’ve done their research in the same way.

They might not have used Home Notes, and it probably, it’s taken them a lot longer, but it might be that they’ve maybe already had work done very recently, or they’ve, you know, just flipped a house or something like that. or they’ve just really gone out and thought about how much everything’s gonna cost.

And when people have done that, it’s just, it’s a much more straightforward conversation.

As the builder, if you know that they understand roughly what things are gonna be, how much they’re gonna cost, and the order in which they should be thinking about stuff, you feel a more, a lot more, inclined to spend a lot of time on the quote and put it all together because you, it’s probably not gonna be a wasted exercise.

and if you’re going the other way round, it is just so frequent that it is complete waste of time because people, and you know, I have done it in the past, I used to do it and go in blindly and people would be like like we want this, this, this and this and it was loads of luxury things just adding loads of bits.

And, and even just talking to them, you’re thinking spend all this money on your house, you know, the houses are selling on your street for 800

Jane: you might have spent millions

Juan – Coastal Trades: On it by the end of it. And you, you think there’s no way they’re gonna do all

all of this stuff.. But uh, um, Oh,

And I think probably

Jane: alot of hungry builders just think I’ll quote for it

Juan – Coastal Trades: win it. And you, you’re just spending loads of time getting loads of prices and then it’s a really like disappointing feeling when you’re going, okay, now I can’t have that and now I can’t have and unpicking it.

Amy D: Or you’re just

Jane: I’m going to be using this one.

Amy D: X amount, but then later on you, you bring in those costs. Like that’s another way round that maybe some builders do, and it’s like, oh, well this is gonna be a bit more, you know? So like the budget, maybe, they’re accepting that the budget grows with the projects and it’s kind of not their responsibility

Juan – Coastal Trades: And that’s probably a common thing that happens, you know, if a client does say, oh, well we’ve got a budget of 200 grand, and the builder’s looking at it going, well, yes, I can do my bit for 200 grand, and

they’re kind of going, yep, you can get it done. And the client’s like, brilliant.

And if a, a client is, is trying to budget all this and they’ve never done it before,

Jane: they

Juan – Coastal Trades: won’t know because why should they?

But there’s so much stuff that is tangled up in it with, with the renovation. There’s all the knock on and the make good. And they might not have thought about, you know, they’re gonna have a big muddy mess in the garden if they’ve had an extension and they need a patio, otherwise they’re gonna open their beautiful bifold

Amy D: onto a mud bath.

Juan – Coastal Trades: you know, that’s like what’s, could be 10 grand, could be 20 grand on top of it. And if they’re already right at the max of their budget, there’s all these things they just, not thinking about it. Like, because they’re thinking about the, the kitchen or, or whatever. So, I think, you know, having a, a process like Home Notes or speaking to, someone that can build a proper scope of works for you at the beginning it’s the only way to really guarantee that you’re gonna get what you want to get, and it’s gonna be finished in the budget that you’ve got.

Otherwise, it’s like you’re just, you are, you’re writing like an open check to the builder basically.

Amy D: Mm.

Juan – Coastal Trades:

I dunno

Amy D: any other situation where you’d be like, okay, I know it’s 200 grand and I know that it’s gonna be an indefinite amount of extra money on top of that, just go for it. It’s crazy it’s so crazy. I think one thing that we’ve found recently is, people who have renovated recently, and I’m talking kind of the last 10 years, I think they come with quite a lot of information and they understand the process and that’s all really valuable.

But the pricing from kind of 10 years ago to now has changed so dramatically. And I I Do you have a way of kind of helping those people ’cause I think that can feel even harder cause they, they know they’re gonna have to spend big amounts of money, but

Juan – Coastal Trades: Yeah.

Amy D: if it’s like everything has incrementally, increased, it’s quite tricky.

Juan – Coastal Trades: I think most people have got a sense that it has gone up. we get that situation where someone did something, firstly they say, oh, we did an extension or whatever eight years ago. And it often comes to light that it was like 15 years ago. Because in your head you’re like, how long ago was it?

So it is often, it’s like a longer time ago than they thought. And the other thing is their neighbors will have done an extension. Oh, they did an extension five years ago and it was this much, and again, it’s like, it wasn’t five years ago, it was 10 years ago. and yeah, so you get that a lot and you do have to just kind of try and manage people’s expectations. I always, I think it’s, it’s a blank slate every time anyway. So if you are talking about the budget and stuff, it doesn’t really matter what their expectation was because if you start at that point from the beginning, then you should be able to have that conversation.

But we also do get people, I had a lady the other day, we were talking about renovating a bathroom and she said, oh yeah, we did a bathroom, before COVID. And she was like, so I’m just assuming it’s probably like 30% more because everything seems to have gone up 30%.

And her budget was like, bang on what I would’ve said it should be for a bath.

Amy D: Wow.

Juan – Coastal Trades: So some people just really have a good idea of how much it have gone up.

Amy D: But

Juan – Coastal Trades: yeah.

Amy D: isn’t it? Like 30%

Juan – Coastal Trades: it’s when you break down certain elements, like I think overall maybe that’s, kind of what it is. But things, you know, you look at because we’ve got price lists on building materials and we’re buying things like bathroom suites and kitchens and all that kind of stuff.

And you look at certain elements and that point where COVID had sort of happened and then everything just shot up and shot up and a lot of it went sky high and then most of it came back down or some of it came back down and then, but there’s certain items that are just so much more, every now and again, find something that we’re quoting for and we’ve still got the old price on the price list and you’re like, it’s like half the price.

none of us are owning double the amount.

Jane: It sounds like you have quite a collaborative way of pricing the works, as in you’re talking about what the items cost and working with the clients as to whether they go in or out, and that sounds really kind of helpful way to do pricing.

But Um, But

if you’re doing a competitive tender against other contractors, why do the prices often come back so different based on the same project?

Juan – Coastal Trades: The first thing I would say is it’s rare that you are given specification if you’re doing small domestic works like extensions and renovations and things like that. I’ve only had it once, I think, since I’ve been doing this, that I’ve had a specification. and that specification wasn’t particularly detailed either.

it was very generic, almost like a builder’s quote. so for that reason, people are not quoting for the same thing. that’s. Primarily the reason, there is a specification, like a really detailed spec, and then you get really wide pricing, there’s a good chance that one of the companies has just not really gone into the detail and they’re just you using a, a real estimate and not actually thinking about it.

They may have got it wrong and that would be, I would, it would be a red flag for me, I would say to someone to check the detail, have they actually read the specification? but just generally people’s prices will be wildly different because different builders will consider the job to be finished, that the kind of start and end will be different for different builders.

Some builders will include all the fees and things like that at the beginning. They will go all the way through to, plastering. They might go all the way through to decorating and. you know, include like 90% of the specification and other builders will go to the floor. So you would end up with say, like a screed finish and not, and then it’s down to you to get, the floor self leveled and then have LVT or engineered floor or tiling or whatever.

And they might not have included any contingencies. A lot of builders won’t include risks and contingencies and things like that when they’re giving you a quote or suggest like provisional sums for risks and things. so it, it’s just, think it’s because there’s, there’s no sort of one builder that does the same thing as the next builder. You’re always gonna get different service from different builders generally. so unless you have a really detailed scope of works, that’s the thing that’s gonna narrow it in. The more detailed your scope of works is the more likely you are gonna get very similar prices from people, but you need to be asking the right questions, and making it clear that contractor is responsible for making good of these bits in between and that they’re covering it all. And I think that’s the other thing is if, if you are thinking of doing a, a self build where you maybe have a main building contractor, but then you are gonna be getting your own plaster and your own electrician and you are, getting these trades in, they won’t be making good necessarily like, they’re not gonna be the glue between each other.

If you have a main building contractor who who is responsible for all of those trades. Then if the sparky makes a hole in the wall when he’s putting up one of the lights at the end, that building contractor will be responsible for fixing the hole, getting a plaster in having it redecorated. And there’s all these little costs that come all the way through it, where if you are doing it separately, everyone will be going, oh no, that’s not my job.

Normally someone else does that And you are either like doing it

Jane: I

Juan – Coastal Trades: someone else to

Jane: really

Juan – Coastal Trades: so there’s a lot of, a lot of that I think.

Jane: love that idea of the main contractor is the glue that holds everyone together. I think that’s such a nice kind of analogy because it’s so true. Like those little gaps. Between each of the trades there’s little gaps and they, yeah, they don’t get filled otherwise.

Juan – Coastal Trades: And it, it affects the sort of trades that that contractor will use. I think, I mean, I, I certainly, I want, like people working for me who, if they make some damage, they either tell me straight away or they fix it themselves. and there’s, there’s the joke of like, you know, sparkies for example, will like make a hole in the wall and then not fix it.

But you, you do get Sparkies who will have a tub of poly filler and you know, you can get people that will do that and they’ll help each other out. And because they know that they’re all working for the same company, it’s not, they’re all like looking out for the next guy down the line. it just makes the whole job go smoother, I’ve seen it on, on other jobs where everyone’s just working for themselves and there’s no sort of head honcho overseeing the whole thing.

And it’s, yeah, it’s just like, it’s not good. It’s just stressful for the contractors themselves, and it’s usually a lot worse for the, the homeowner.

Amy D: and can I ask you, in terms of when you first meet a client, or when you’re working with someone, what, what would you say are kind of, I guess, red flags that you notice when you meet clients? And also on the flip side, what makes a great client to work with when you are, when you are building?

Juan – Coastal Trades: I think it depends on the type of builder that you are. A red flag for me might not be a red flag for another builder. Like if a client says, oh, we want to do this, this, this, this, and this, another builder might be like, that’s great because I only do this bit so you, know, I’m happy that you are doing all those bits for us, it would be a red flag, not in terms of that’s a bad customer, they just might not be a good fit for what we are gonna offer. the genuine red flags I suppose that I’ve come across over the years would be. When you meet someone who says, oh yeah, we’ve been let down by another builder. We’ve had a run of really bad builders or other trades, plumbers, whatever. I’ve found that often there’s been an underlying issue with that relationship with the client and the builder, and we’ve engaged with them and started working with them. We’ve kind ofrealized, okay, I think they’ve had a problem over this because they haven’t been able to communicate or they haven’t been honest about something so that kind of rings an alarm bell a little bit. I always want to investigate a bit more, and get to know the person a bit more and see the problem, and that’s really the only. Alarm bell that would signal like, this might not be a good customer for me to work with, or it might be a risk for me.

Amy D: So you’re saying that kind of communication and transparency from the client is important to you?

Juan – Coastal Trades: yeah. So, On the flip side of this, a great client to us is, able to communicate. and often when we are talking about clients, it’s usually a partnership. it might be a husband, wife, there’s usually a couple of people involved in the dynamic that you’re working with. So if we could, if I was looking at like the ideal setup, you’ve got people that are able to communicate

quite honestly and

You can communicate to and explain

things to in a reasonable way

I read the other day, it’s something like 500 decisions that you have to make within like a small renovation as, as the owner. And there’s a lot of decisions to be made, and some of them are easy, but you, you do come across people who really labor over every single decision and can’t come to a decision. And we can’t come to the decision for them. So that, that’s really important.

yeah, that was gonna be one of my questions is that one of the potential things that slow a site down,

Amy D: kind of the inability to make a decision.

Juan – Coastal Trades: It can do, yeah. that can be problematic. That and changing decisions.

You know, like I mentioned before,

if someone wants to change their mind, they can change their mind 10 times. It

doesn’t matter to us, to an extent. There’s a limit,

we’ve got another job booked and we’re having to delay

things

But generally speaking there’s n problem if someone

has a window installed here

As long as we’re able to explain to them well. The window’s gone in, the window’s been ordered, this is what it’s gonna affect, this is how long it’s gonna take, and this is the cost of that. but those sorts of things can delay things. I think generally on the scheme of like a whole job, big delays will be

through like things that should be captured by contingencies. You know, at the beginning when you’re digging a foundation, if there’s a root or,

you are looking to expose a foundation and it’s not there.

And building control obviously say you need to underpin this

Or like things with structural steel where you have to get a structural engineer in those can cause the biggest delays to a project, I would say. Short in like the kind of short term and in the beginning, because you are often having to involve, the building control officer, the builder, and the structural engineer. And then depending on who you’ve used for a structural engineer, sometimes they just take ages to get back to you. during that time, the builder might, might say, okay, we can go and do another activity.

But it’s like less efficient. They’re doing it out of sequence and it’s kind of,

it’s like often it’s costing the builder money because they’re, they’re just working inefficiently or they might have to pull off site, if it’s really a long delay and they’ve got like a big gang of people. Because otherwise the homeowner’s gonna have to pay for those people to stand around and do nothing. and if the delay is one week, you know, waiting for the plans, the builder might have to take a job that’s two weeks. So it is not always like. You take one thing out and put it back in, if that makes sense. So those things can cause a delay.

Amy D: Yeah,

Juan – Coastal Trades: I suppose that’s more around decision making.

We know that we need to order that by this date because we’re gonna need to put it in on this date. That sort of thing really delay your job. If you haven’t thought about those questions at the beginning, and you are halfway through the job and you suddenly decide, I want this crazy sunken floor bath I’m ordering it from Japan, and it’s gonna take four weeks to arrive, that could delay your job.

so that, yeah, and I think that’s probably the difference slightly with being really organized and using home notes or having a design build kind of project manager who’s gonna give you a big list of, call them CDNs, so it’s like client decision needed.

And they’ll all be highlighted yellow, amber, red as they’re getting closer and closer to the date. If you do all of that stuff and you’ve got your risks and contingencies and the builders built in some time for stuff to go wrong, then your project should, go smoothly.

Jane: I guess most people don’t have that, that just sounds great, just having all of those key decisions that you need to make laid out in a timescale. Most people don’t have the luxury of someone to do that for them either an architect or a contractor who’s doing proper project management that includes the client as well as as well as the build that just sounds so good and it’s just so necessary isn’t it because You know, saying there’s 500 decisions on a project, that’s, that’s so much to fit into your daily life, to kind of fit around work and kids.

You do need somebody to be pushing you to say, look, you have to do this tonight, even though you’re tired, get on with it. Otherwise, you can imagine how those things just roll and they don’t get made.

Juan – Coastal Trades: I think this is it. And if you are not asking those decisions until you are in the middle of the job, like you might think in your head in the future that, oh, well when they’re doing the bathroom, I’ll be able to decide what I want for this. actually

Jane: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: they’re doing the bathroom. It might be that your son’s got his A levels and you are having a disaster at work and you’ve been called into meetings and it’s a really busy week for you or, or anything.

Jane: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: number of things that could happen that make your week stressful and compacted. And then you are then getting a, a WhatsApp from your builder,on a Tuesday night going, plumber’s here tomorrow, he’s gotta put the valves in, otherwise we’ve gotta delay the tiler and you haven’t made a decision on this, and then you are like stressing over it.

Whereas you can make those decisions before anyone comes and starts working in your house.

Amy D: Hmm.

Juan – Coastal Trades: It is, it’s just about planning and knowing all the decisions like you say.

Amy D: Yeah. Oh, I’m, I’m glad that, our listeners will be hearing this from another, person. ’cause we’re always like, just, just decide everything now

Jane: Yeah,

Amy D: but I

Jane: but

Amy D: to get round to, ’cause it always feels like there will be time.

Jane: You kind of want to see the space as well. So I kind of feel like we’ve got, we’re in the, construction is happening in the background. and I keep thinking, we have made a set of decisions, kind of knowing, I don’t really know what that’s going to feel like, or I’m not sure how that’s going to be.

But there’s a decision there, that it’s not going to be terrible if it happens, and then maybe if I get in the room and I say actually no, I want to change that, it will be a minor change rather than a whole redesign kind of thing.

Juan – Coastal Trades: This is a, I think it’s that 80 20 rule. Even if you made a hundred percent of your decisions upfront, unless you are, the sort of homeowner who’s never gonna visit the site and the architect’s executing it with the builder, you are gonna change things and there’s always gonna be things that you can’t visualize, especially windows and light.

And when you are really altering a room, you are standing in your pokey little kitchen like a galley kitchen and you are thinking about this huge open plan kitchen with roof lights and all the light streaming in. You can’t always make decisions like that you are gonna stand by, because once someone’s opened out the space and then you walk into that room, people do it all the time.

They go, oh, that’s just never gonna work. We thought we wanted that there, but now that this is like this, actually when we look out of this window, we’re gonna be staring at something that we don’t wanna see, or

If you’ve got

like as many of those decisions made as you can, instead of having all of that noise while you are trying to think about the importance already done, and you can focus on the actual decisions that you need to make,

Amy D: Yeah,

Jane: it’s really good advice.

Amy D: I guess it kind of follows on to communication. Like what do you think is the best way for clients to communicate with you when you’re on site

Juan – Coastal Trades: it depends if you are working with builder who is like. builder’s on site, the builder is building the house, and then the builder’s going home doing the quotes and sending you invoices, and he’s a one man band, you know, with a little team. Or if you’re working with a project manager, either way, I think the important thing is to establish that with the builder. So we will often say to people, we’ve got a site manager, we will sort of say when not to communicate with him. So ideally, can you just him do his thing up until, say, nine o’clock, nine 30? Because that’s the most important time of the day when he’s

having

a huddle with the guys that are on site.

There’s contractors come in, there’s materials getting delivered, and he needs to just get that bit done. And then everyone is working for the whole day and knowing what they’re doing. Because yeah, having a ton of questions from the homeowner at that point, everyone’s just stood around waiting and they dunno what they’re doing.

Amy D: Hmm.

Juan – Coastal Trades: you know, these are the best times if you want to just have ad hoc questions for the site manager. but if you’ve got a project manager, generally do like a routine. And this depends on the, the client. Like a default, we’ll have like a two weekly tracker that we, populate.

We populate it weekly, but we’ll have a kind of summary WhatsApp that we send to the client or we’ll have a, a meeting with them and be like, this is where we’re at with this room, these are the decisions you need to make. These are the, we’ve come across a few snags.

We’ve put them in the list. We’re gonna complete them by these dates and give them like a financial summary but then generally, like ad hoc as well with WhatsApp is great. We, we use WhatsApp all the time. it’s good ’cause you can search for your messages if you just have that sort of single written point of communication. But it just depends, you know, it depends on the homeowner as well and the, the age of the person. If they’re, they just wanna have phone calls and meetings or, in some cases they just, we don’t hardly communicate with them at all. it just depends. I’ve just finished a project for a, guy and I’ve never met him. I’ve never spoken to him a single time. And all the communication through another guy who, we have a WhatsApp chat, which I would once a week send a picture of each completed room and the percentages of everything that’s completed. a summary of any provisionals that we’re like, we think you should do this, this, and this. It’s gonna cost this much. Does he wanna do them? And then a financial summary. And we’ve been working on that for six months. I’ve still never spoken to the guy. Whereas

other projects, it’s like you’re in contact with them every day and it depends you’re at in the project. And again, like how many decisions you manage to get agreed upfront, how involved they want you to be in the design aspect. ’cause sometimes people are just like, what do you think of this? And it’s like, you’re just talking about what looks cool, you know,

Jane: Jo,

Juan – Coastal Trades: For me, I like it. Like I’m just obsessed with houses and kitchens and bathrooms and stuff. So

Jane: You’ve seen a lot of them, so I guess you’re a good person to, to ask, isn’t it? What are other people doing on their projects and, yeah, what would be good for us?

I, I’m thinking you, you sound really organised with like, you know, trackers and progress and updating your clients. If a homeowner’s working with a contractor who doesn’t really do that, it’s just kind of, they’re getting on with the job but you’re not really sure, you’re having kind of meetings, do you think it’s okay for the client to keep a summary or write minutes or how do you think it can work from the other way from the client side?

Just, just so that everybody feels like there’s some kind of record or…

Juan – Coastal Trades: I dunno how someone would do it. It depends how organized they are.

Jane: Mm,

Juan – Coastal Trades: I mean, I, I can only say to do

Jane: no.

Juan – Coastal Trades: do it, you know, in a, in a really basic format would be to get the quote that the builders agreed and break it down into each line. Hopefully it’s got a few lines and it’s not just like three stages. And then that’s your talking point. that’s how we would do it. even on a small, say like a kitchen or something, you’d probably have maybe 15 different things that are happening in that build like the start to finish. And that’s kind of your talking point. You’re going through, like the list starts here and you’ve got a hundred percent, 80%, 80%, 60%.

Anything that is in that list that needs a decision, make a note of it and create the deadlines for that. And anything that’s not in that list, but you know, you need to have, those are probably the more important decisions.

They’re like your provisional things that you haven’t even agreed on to the point where the builder can’t quote for it because he doesn’t know what you want to do, they need to be in your decision list. And I’d be going through that list as well on a, like a weekly basis. I guess the more, the more organized you can be if, if you’ve got a builder that’s not, you are basically becoming a project manager, right?

That’s your, whatever your job was

Amy D: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: before, now you are a construction project manager. So it would be about talk, you know,

Jane: I guess

Juan – Coastal Trades: and get a sense, maybe even in the quoting process, like they’re giving you a quote, say, are you happy for me to have a regular once a week call with you at a set time?

And I’m gonna take notes and I’d like to go through each point. And it’s not gonna be to grill you, it’s just to make sure that you have all the decisions that you need from me and that I understand what you’re doing. And you get a good response, then that’s probably a good fit for you as a builder. If they’re like, I just, I don’t do that. You won’t need to do that. It’ll be fine. And that fills you with dread, then maybe don’t go with that builder.

Jane: I guess I’m a person who does, so always thinking of it from if nobody was keeping check of what was happening or progress or things that needed to be ordered, I think I would find obviously that quite stressful, so just the thought that nobody’s doing that,

just sounds crazy to me, but potentially there are situations where that would be okay. But I feel like if you’re that type of person who kind of wants to know how things are progressing, the agreement is key, isn’t it?

Because you want to have buy -in from the contractor that you’re like, look, I kind of feel like I’d like to do this, is that okay? And you’re not like overstepping the mark. You don’t want to become a project manager, because you don’t want to take responsibility for their work, really, do you?

Juan – Coastal Trades: But who else is gonna project manage it

Jane: I guess they are project managing their part. It’s just like, you need to have that communication somehow to know that you’re both aware of where you’re at, if you know what I mean. Yeah,

Juan – Coastal Trades: They, like, if you guess that they’re project managing their part, but they’re not, they’re often not, you know, a builder is really good at building, but they probably never actually done any training on how to project manage. They just, they’re doing it like how, you know how to cook dinner.

Like they, they know that probably if they start dinner at six o’clock, it’ll be done by seven because they’ve cooked dinner loads of times and they’re really good at it and it’ll taste nice. like, they’re not necessarily to like, I don’t know, write a recipe. This is a bad metaphor, but it’s,

Jane: we absolutely love metaphors.

Juan – Coastal Trades: Yeah, it did. It got a bit weak at the end. I think the assumption that a builder how to project manage in a, in like all senses of the, of the word, like commercially as well as operationally, they will get the job done . like without the builder, I, I heard someone saying the other day, like if a, like if a builder walked off site, the job would probably get finished on its own because eventually the plumber would drive past and go, what’s going on with that job?

And just turn up and like finish his bit. And then someone else would be like, when, when do you need me to come in? And it would just get done like without the builder, but it would be terrible. And there’s kind of like a scale in between that happening and it going really, really smoothly. And builders sit somewhere in the middle depending on how coordinated they are. so I really think that’s, that is the danger as people make these assumptions that because they’ve seen really nice finished product on that builder’s Instagram that that came to be in a, non-stressful way, and it was really organized and it went budget and it was on time because it’s not, it’s not always the case. So I think you have to assume that unless they make it very clear that they will project manage the build in an organized way. If you ask the questions and they’re like, sort of looking blankly at you, then the assumption should be that you are the project manager.

Amy D: I think also you get a sense of this really early on, ’cause I think even the way that a builder responds with their quote and, the amount of information that they’re giving you, like, there’s lots and lots of clues as to what the setup is. you really do get a sense of, like you say, on that scale where your builder is sitting in terms of admin and I think it is an interesting thing to say. That their sense of organization and how good they are at managing actually doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad or good builder. You know, like builders are really good at what they do. They just might not be very good at being organized is essentially what you’re saying.

Juan – Coastal Trades: Yeah, It depends on what you want to do. Like if you are the sort of person that really enjoys organizing things and like some people just naturally want to, manage the project and, you know,

Be involved. Yeah.and be the ultimate decision maker on everything. And they want to do that and they’ve got the time to do it, then you could absolutely find builder who is like, you know, if you are ranking them on like craftsmanship and coordination price, you could probably find someone who’s of absolute craftsman is maybe a little bit less organized and is very reasonably priced.

And then you are making up for it because you are very organized yourself.

Amy D: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: if you’re using home notes for example, and you’ve kind of taken that big weight of the admin out at the beginning. because of that, you can probably find a builder who, like I say, is an absolute craftsman, but maybe is not quite as organized as you are, it’s a partnership like you’re, you are working together to get result.

Amy D: Yeah.

Jane: my, my final question, how much tea should be provided, and when and how? Because this is something that’s stressing me right now, because I keep on thinking, like, I must make tea. And then not everybody drinks tea, then I’m like, do we make coffee? How often?

Every time I have a cup of tea, should I be making them tea? Like, tell me, what’s the answer?

Juan – Coastal Trades: I think if you wanted a, a kind of fits all approach to tea making and coffee making, it would be, and this again, the sign of a great client is like on day one they’ll say, when do you want tea and coffee? Or they’ll say, when are your breaks? you know, maybe you’ve got break at 10 and a break at one, for example, they’ll pop out at that time and go, who wants coffee? Or even like, just before it, you know, I’ve had like both, both extremes. I’ve had sites where I’ve been working on site and coffees are like, it’s too much. Like you, you’re getting offered coffee every hour and a half and everyone’s just like gonna, the toilet, they’re all like frantic and, oh my God, I’ve had like six cups of instant coffee today

but yeah, I think if, if, if someone offers like a couple of times a day, that’s really, that is really nice and it does make a difference. I like the amount of, Conversations that I’ve had with builders about people that didn’t make them a coffee. and the effect it has on the relationship, I think it’s really important.

Like it’s just a common decency, isn’t it? You know, if you, if you went to any, business meeting or

anywhere else, someone would make you a coffee, like, or off at least offer you one. and yeah, you know, the, the guys

are working hard

so yeah.

Jane: I guess my final question, um, the end of the project, it’s such a big thing, isn’t it? Yeah. But then it’s somehow, like, everybody, you’ve made these connections with people, then everybody disappears, and actually it’s like, oh wow, like, they did this amazing thing for me, or for us, or, you know, and then everybody’s gone.

I kind of always think it would be nice to get a present, or do something for the crew, but, like, what’s appropriate? What do people do at the end of a project that’s nice, for you, or your team?

Juan – Coastal Trades: I mean, we generally do something like that for the client, like we’ll give them a, you know, like a houseplant and a couple of mugs and, but, I dunno, I, I don’t think anyone’s ever given us a gift before. had.

Amy D: no. I feel like we need to get you.

Juan – Coastal Trades: I’ve only had, I’ve had it once and actually it was the, the guy that we were working for that we’ve never met, he, he tipped everyone on the job. Like, I think he’s just a really old school businessman, and my accountant was like, why is he paid this much? Your invoice was this much? And I was like, I think it’s a tip. But I had to ask them to make sure it wasn’t an accounting error. but yeah, I don’t know. I, I, I can’t really think of anything that would, would be, needed. I think honestly, if you

were just really happy and, we have had a card. I’ve definitely had a few cards at the end of a job.

I think just communicating that you are really happy with what the work that’s happened and of in a, almost like a feedbacky way. Like that’s, that makes everyone happy. I mean, I would always like, you know, tell everyone like they’re super stoked.

You’ve done a great job. I think just the message would, would mean the world to everyone probably.

Jane: it’s really, really nice.

yeah, I think, I guess for the homeowner, it’s such a bigger thing, isn’t it? Because everyone else, it’s their job and they’re moving on to the next site and that’s the thing. But it’s such a life -changing experience that sometimes you can feel a bit bereft when everybody’s gone.

You’re just like, oh, I mean, you’re pleased, obviously, because you get your new house.

Juan – Coastal Trades: But it’s, it’s true. yeah, especially like longer projects, we do like a full reno and the clients are living in the house. It’s like you’re living together for like six months, you know, you are

Amy D: Mm.

Juan – Coastal Trades: speaking to them, you’re seeing them every single day, and you are, you are in their house.

Like is, like you’re living there.

Amy D: Yeah.

Juan – Coastal Trades: So the feeling’s mutual. you finish a project, you know, you kind of, you miss ’em. You’re like, oh, wonder what they’re up to. I hope they’re enjoying the place.

Jane: that feels like a really good,

Amy D: yeah,

Jane: to wrap up.

Amy D: thank you so much for your,

Jane: Yeah,

Amy D: yeah. Advice and, it’s really lovely to be able to ask you lots of questions. So thank you

Jane: yeah.

Amy D: your time.

Juan – Coastal Trades: No

Jane: Yeah, I feel like that was a brilliant, brilliant episode.

And that’s the end of this series of Home Truths. We hope you’ve enjoyed it and thanks for being with us. let’s know how your renovation goes and yeah,

stay tuned for our next series of stories from sites, which will be coming soon.