Save Hours at Home Depot + Lowe's

[Cody Caswell]

Every flipper has found themselves at Lowe's for the fourth time in a single day, picking up yet another piece of material for a project. Most investors choose materials on the fly, right as their contractors need them. "Time to install lights? Great, I'll go to Lowe's today to get them!"

The problem with this is that:

1. You're wasting hours of your time driving and walking around stores looking for the right lights to fit in your project when you should be looking for more deals.

2. Your project will never turn out as good as it should because you are subject to what the stores have in stock at that very moment.

3. You're adding days to your rehab because your contractors are waiting on materials.

So, how do you fix this? One word - Preparation! There are two items that you need to completely solve this problem for your rehabs: properly built Design Boards and a Finish Schedule. After doing an audit on my time and realizing that I spent over 40% of my time shopping for materials, I knew I needed to find a better solution. So we created our system of fully designing homes before we ever swing a hammer on a project.

First off, the Design Boards. You've probably seen some of these before - basically, it's a visual representation of all of the materials that you'll be using for each room inside of the house. Plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, flooring, cabinetry - everything you are using for the project should be found on these design boards. These serve two purposes:

1. It ensures that each room will flow throughout the home. Using design boards, you can directly see the light fixtures contained in the kitchen next to the lights going over the vanities. If something is off, you'll be able to notice it BEFORE you ever order the products!

2. It gives visual confirmation of the project plan to everyone involved. If you contractor has a question about what tile is installed where, just check the design boards. No more getting your phone blown up with questions!

Next is the Finish Schedule. This is the true organizational and budgeting tool that every investor should be using for their projects. Essentially, the Finish Schedule is a spreadsheet that contains all of the product links, SKU numbers, quantities needed, and installation locations for every single piece of material that goes into your project. Once this spreadsheet is built out, there should be no more questions about the game plan for your rehab. Your contractor should know where to buy the materials, what quantity they will need, the price of them, and where/how they will be installed throughout the project. The Finish Schedule serves two vital purposes:

1. Holds the contractor accountable. If something gets installed incorrectly or in the wrong location, you have proof that it was their fault, not yours. The Finish Schedule should be so detailed to ensure that every question the contractor has, should be answered. If they mess something up, it's because they didn't check the Finish Schedule!

2. Allows you to STOP wasting time at Lowe's and Home Depot! Since you already know what materials are being used and you have the list right on your Finish Schedule, you just simply click and order. No more going to three different stores looking for the perfect faucet!

I know these can seem like a lot of work to create, and frankly, they are! We built over 70 of these for our clients last year alone. However, we have found time and time again that 10-20 hours of preparation on the front end can save you 50-60 hours during the renovation.

[Cody Caswell]

Quote from @Bruce Woodruff:

You're correct that getting every detail involved right from the start is critical! It was my biggest problem as a GC. Having a rock solid SOW can prevent many of the issues that arise during any project. Every little thing in the project should be in writing, even down to the door stops :-) See my tile spec sheet below ...

Two problems with your post though - 

1) In my experience, most problems come from the customer changing their minds constantly. I've done a lot of projects with 40 Change Orders or more, I mean $5k, $10k, $40k COs! The Contractor is wrongly blamed for job over-runs when it is usually the clients fault. (In my experience. I know there are bad Contrs out there)

2) Also in my experience, the customer should not be involved in picking up materials, ever. Waste of time, huge room for error and zero reason for a customer to do this.....any Contractor worth his salt will have better pricing/quality/selection on the big stuff and will have guys on his crew that can do those dreaded 'parts runs' for the little stuff.

 Yes we definitely encourage everyone to STICK TO THE PLAN when renovating! It's easier for an investor to stay committed to the plan and avoid change orders than it is a regular homeowner. Investors typically want to stay within the original budget.The only way to do this is to stick to the plan and avoid COs!

I disagree with you regarding materials, however. We source and purchase all finish materials for our projects (lights/plumbing fixtures/etc). I think this totally depends on the investor and how many projects they are doing in a given year. If the investor is actively involved and can stay on top of materials, roll with it! Especially if you're doing enough volume to get good discounts on products. However if you aren't doing mass scale, we definitely suggest letting the contractor handle material purchasing.