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The art of compromise When the bid's too high, cut remodeling costs by asking the right questions. by Mark E. Dixon
For more than 10 years, we’d lived with a galley kitchen that was mostly unchanged since the last owners installed it, in 1942 -- metal cabinets; black linoleum flooring; standing room only. We had ambitions for this room. Plus, we’d shopped. You know how that works: First, you have no idea what you want. Then, you find something and can’t live without it. In our case, it was plain, Shakerlike cabinetry with inset doors and drawers, each surrounded by beaded molding. Although it was less "modern" than what we would be tossing into the dumpsters, we decided its warm traditional look better complemented the Federal-area architecture of our home. And besides that, the plywood construction -- with maple fronts and doors – promised longer wear than the medium-density fiberboard (MDF) frequently found in less-expensive cabinets. Fortunately, I do ask pretty good questions. So, I sat down to talk with Greg Pereni, president of Cabinet Brokers, the Parkerford, Pennsylvania, shop we’d discovered through a carpenter friend of ours. I asked how he’d come up with his numbers for our cabinets. What I learned surprised us and saved our budget. THE INSIDE STORY It seems that kitchen cabinets – in fact, lots of things about home construction – are like cars. When it comes to price, some things are standard; others are options. In addition, some of the things that builders and manufacturers consider standard are, in fact, optional. Take cabinet interiors. I’d never given them a thought. Cindy and I had discussed the exteriors at length. She wanted white cabinets; I wanted stained. (She won.) She wanted raised panels; I wanted flat. (I won.) But the insides? We wanted them to be durable and easily cleaned, but we weren’t greatly concerned about their looks. Once loaded with dishes and cereal boxes, we figured we’d never see them again anyway.
Next, Cindy wanted an organizer as part of the built-in kitchen desk that would function as her at-home headquarters. We tend to let our bills mellow until they’re due. Too often, though, we’ve paid bills late after losing them under clutter. An organizer, we hoped, would prevent this. At the outset, though, we had asked that the organizer – a series of cubbyholes – be built inside a 32-inch-wide cabinet where it would be hidden by the doors. It wasn’t so much a preference as a spur-of-the-moment decision. And an expensive one. For reasons I still don’t completely understand, putting the organizer inside the cabinet had ramifications on its construction that would have cost nearly a thousand dollars. For a few hundred dollars, however, the shop offered to provide a standard organizer that would mount on the bottom of the wall cabinet over Cindy’s desk. To allow room for it, we shrank the wall cabinet, saving still more money. Savings? About $700. Then, there was the butler’s pantry: about seven feet of base cabinets and a couple of wall cabinets on either side of a window. Located in a wide passageway between the dining and family rooms, the butler’s pantry would provide both additional storage and a serving station for formal meals. The butler’s pantry was separate from the kitchen, however, and because of that, we’d forgotten to mention it when Pereni gave us his initial seat-of-the-pants estimate. The additional cost: a couple of thousand dollars. Oops! Ultimately, this sent us back to the "finish" issue. Painting cabinets is more work than staining them, and cabinetmakers charge accordingly. At Pereni’s shop, there was a 20 percent surcharge which, in the butler’s pantry alone, amounted to $400. Cindy’s heart remained set on a white kitchen, but we easily agreed to stain the butler’s pantry cabinets to match our cherry dining room furniture. The bonus: I got some of the stained cabinetry I’d originally wanted. Savings? About $400. ON A ROLL Once we got going, we found other ways that we could lower the estimate. To conceal some pipes, our builder needed to bump out a wall two inches. This required an adjustment in the size of two cabinets which, because cabinets are typically sized in three-inch increments, pushed them into the expensive "custom" category. Although, ironically, that change decreased the cabinets' size, it increased costs by nearly a couple of hundred dollars. Solution: We asked the builder to bump out the wall three inches instead of two. This cost us nothing extra, and it allowed us to work within the cabinetmaker’s three-inch format. The two cabinets still got a little smaller, but their price went down, rather than up. Pereni also pointed out that we’d gone a little crazy with drawers. Drawers are significantly more expensive than doors; they’re simply more work to make. A 30-inch base cabinet outfitted with three drawers costs about a third more than one with two doors. Solution: We simply looked at our door-versus-drawer decisions more critically, made a few changes and saved a few hundred more dollars. Eventually, we got our cabinet costs where they needed to be without giving up those things we most wanted.
According to New York architect Arthur Lasky, most homeowners are simply not knowledgeable enough about construction to handle these steps unassisted. An architect, he said, is far better equipped to bring in a quality project that functions better and has better aesthetics at a fair price. "Homeowners don’t understand all the details," said Lasky, "and they tend to add things after the fact, not take them out." That’s where things really begin to get expensive. Lasky goes on to explain that there's an informal rule among architects that for every $1 spent making a change in the design phase, the same change will cost $10 after bidding is complete. After the builder or manufacturer has a contract in hand, the same change will cost $100. And if the change is made in the field, plan on spending $1,000 for what would have once cost $1. Seen from that perspective, insists Lasky, architect’s fees are a bargain, and worth every cent of the 20 percent that, on average, they add to a project’s cost. However, only about 25 percent of all residential building projects involve an architect, according to the AIA. (In our case, we paid an architect about 5 percent of the cost of the project to create and refine a design; the rest was up to us.) This means that to one degree or another, therefore, most homeowners facing a construction project will be in charge of containing their own costs. So, heed the voice of experience and be sure to ask questions.
WORDS OF WISDOM "Keep it simple" is a good rule when it comes to reducing the cost of most housing projects, says New York architect Arthur Lasky. Anything that requires extra labor will also raise the price. "It’s better to spend money on the bones of the house," he said. Pleasing architecture, well-proportioned rooms, and quality construction are worth more than gadgets with short lifespans. (And the gadgets can be added later.) To save money, Lasky advised looking carefully at the following areas:
Home magazine / July-August 2001
 Mark
E. Dixon
757 Upper Gulph Road
Wayne, PA 19087-2022
USA
610-971-0649
dixon_mark@verizon.net
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Kitchens are money pits. We knew this. But my wife
and I still gulped when the cabinetmaker’s formal bid came in almost a third
higher than his initial "ballpark" estimate. With countertops,
appliances and fixtures still ahead, we knew something had to go, but we didn’t
welcome the idea of buying cheap kitchen cabinets.
Pereni
had done what cabinet guys do. He calculated a price based on the shop’s
standard practice of finishing the interiors just like the exteriors. That
included hand sanding and multiple coats of paint. It was an easy
decision. After a roughly 15-second conversation, Cindy and I agreed on
interiors finished with a wood-grained laminate, except for two glass-fronted
wall cabinets whose interiors were visible. Savings? About $2,000.
HOW
THE PROS WORK The process, I’ve
since learned, was an informal version of what the American Institute of
Architects (AIA) calls "bid and negotiation." Basically, it
means crunching numbers and adjusting your wants until the two are in
sync. On large projects, bid-and-negotiation is typically the middle phase
of a five-step process between the builder and the project owner or his
representative. Other steps include an initial design, refinement of the design,
creation of construction documents and construction administration.