Dennis Gehman, MCR, president of Gehman Design Remodeling
Expertise: Contracting

The popular home renovation shows on HGTV would have you believe that projects begin with a brief design phase followed by construction crews showing up at your house to immediately start the demo process. In reality, there are weeks and even months of detailed planning that must be done behind the scenes before the first hammer can be swung.
As the president of one of the most respected design-build firms in the region—and the new president of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry—Dennis Gehman, MCR (Master Certified Remodeler), knows a thing or two about being prepared. He spoke with House & Home about the importance of planning ahead and the pitfalls that can be avoided.

Why is proper planning so crucial before beginning a remodeling project?
When we are working in someone's house it can be quite an inconvenience, especially in kitchens, bathrooms and spaces they use every day. When the planning is not done properly, you possibly end up starting and stopping and adding to the inconvenience factor because decisions have to be made or materials have to be purchased. Right now especially, many materials are out of stock and have long lead times. Those kinds of things come into play and it always ends up being more expensive when you don't plan ahead.

Why should people have a master plan for the whole house interior and exterior even if they're not ready to tackle all of it at one time?
We once had a client who contacted us about remodeling the whole first floor of their house. They just wanted the plans at first—since we were going to be relocating doors and windows across the back wall of the house—and then they were going to put the project on hold for a few years so they could have a patio built outside. That happened and we went back several years later. The patio looked gorgeous but the contractor who installed it didn't do proper waterproofing. They built it up against the wood framing of the house, so now water could get in and just sit and it would end up rotting out the floor framing.

If they would have had us involved in the whole design it would have been fine having their patio contractor do the work, but you have to make sure someone is looking at it from all angles. They ended up paying $20,000 extra for us to pull the patio apart and do proper waterproofing and then put it back together.

You mentioned the long lead times for materials. Is it unlike anything you've ever seen during your career?
It is, yes. I think we've been just as busy in the past, probably around 2006 right before the recession, but we didn't have any issues getting materials. Because of COVID, a number of plants either shut down or had a limited number of employees and couldn't produce as much. Then, this past winter the freeze happened in Texas. A lot of building products, especially sealants and vinyl and plastics, are manufactured in Texas, and many of those plants had their pipes burst. They're still not all the way back up and running.

Can additional work orders really derail a project?
Certainly, because the whole time period will take longer. There are two components to an additional work order. No. 1, in remodeling we don't always know what we're going to find when we open up that wall, that floor or that ceiling, and sometimes there are surprises that we should probably take care of right away. The other part is, and I think a lot of this can be prevented with better upfront planning, is the "while we're at it" syndrome. People like what we're doing in the kitchen and all of a sudden they ask us to paint the walls in the laundry room, install new cabinets and a new laundry sink. Typically, the answer is yes and we're always grateful for work, but we may have to come back at a later time for the additional room. Just like they were patiently waiting for us, we have other clients who are anticipating us coming to their house in a certain week. Too many additional work orders might mean we're not able to keep that commitment.

What is a general rule of thumb for how long the planning process should take?
I would say a minimum of six weeks. Part of our role when we're going through the design process is to make sure that the clients know what all of their options are. That's a fine line because we don't want them to feel that we're always upselling them. But we also don't want them to be disappointed to find at the end of the project that there's another product or design feature they would have loved to have and now it's too late.

Gehman Design Remodeling
PA-297
355 Main St. | Harleysville, Pa.
(215) 513-0300
GehmanRemodeling.com

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 21, Issue 9 (June 2021). 
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