A Room Addition or a General Remodel allows you to customize your home to meet your needs and desires. Remodeling means that you don’t have to give up a familiar neighborhood and schools. More and more Bozeman families are deciding to stay put and improve their existing home.

Getting Started

Before embarking on building a home addition, or similar large home remodeling project, a couple of important items need to be considered.

Have you interviewed and selected an honest and reliable remodeling contractor? Does he have the commitment and track record for timely and efficient completion of projects similar to yours? The second most important issue is: what is your personal disruption threshold for a project of this nature?

Whether it’s adding another story, converting a garage or basement, or just a room enlargement, the disruption factor runs the gamut. I have done many large second story additions, and not once was it advisable for the clients to try and occupy the home while we did the work. Fortunately they were second homes.

A good example of this was the second story addition for Blair and Jacqui Stewart in Pebble Beach, California. The main issue was timing. A second story addition opens up and exposes areas below to the weather. It was critical in all cases that we maintained a high level of organization and efficiency in order to start and complete the project within reasonable time constraints and avoid unnecessary damage to existing areas because of winter weather issues.

Any work taking place inside a clients personal residence, needs to be undertaken with care. An example of a major interior remodel would be a project I did for Celia Bertoia in Bozeman. We gutted and rearranged interior walls, removed, moved, and added windows and doors, and added a bathroom. This all happened while they were living in the home.

The keys to the success of this project were twofold. The first was to totally separate the area that they were living in from the work area. We did this with a temporary framed dust barrier wall. The second was to start with a clear timeline and a goal to complete the project within a reasonable, spelled out timeline.

Celia had an understanding of the challenges of living with this construction project, and was also an active participant. She did the tile work and the painting. The beauty of this project was that we worked as a team for a common goal and achieved it.

In a remodel project not every client wants to actually participate, but the importance of a clean, safe, well organized worksite, courtesy, clear communication, and goal setting cannot be overstated.

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