Three Things Kansas City Remodeling Contractors
Get Wrong About Bathrooms And Kitchens

True Craftsmanship Is All About
What Lies Beneath The Beauty

Let’s face it – anyone can change the look of your kitchen or bath and get you to say “WOW” when they’re finished.

What you’re responding to isn’t necessarily the quality of their work but rather the effect of the reveal – and many Kansas City contractors rely on that moment to get themselves out the door and down the road before you start looking too closely at their work.

These contractors are easily spotted by their workmanship guarantees. These guarantees range from the infamous tail light warranty (it lasts as long as you can still see their tail lights) to, at best, a few months.

Their warranties are lacking because they lack the skill or the will to do work that they trust to last.

Here are three ways these contractors can fail the homeowners who hire them.

1) Penny Pinching

There’s nothing wrong with demanding the best value for your hard-earned money. The trouble comes when all you care about is the cost and ignore the value (or lack thereof).

One prime example of choosing cost over quality is contractors who order their materials from the local big box stores instead of professional suppliers. Often, this is how they purchase the materials you don’t see. Backerboards, floor pans, and underlayment are popular choices for trying to save a buck.

Why?

Because you’ll never know until you notice the water leaks and cracking tile a year or so down the road. But by then, your contractor is long gone and so is your warranty.

Sometimes their efforts to save on cost are right in front of your nose – you just aren’t expert enough to see them. Don’t feel bad – if you were, you’d be doing the work yourself.

One such product is the grout they use. Sand-based grout is common and inexpensive, but did you know you need to seal it twice a year? Forever? That’s OK, almost nobody does.

At Jericho Home Improvements, we use acrylic grout, which costs roughly ten times more but doesn’t need to be sealed and lasts, well, forever.

Does using expensive materials affect our quotes? Absolutely! But then again, we’re not in this to be the lowest bidder. Our prime goal is to offer homeowners the best bang for their buck and a gorgeous kitchen or bath remodel that will last a lifetime.

2) Doing Labor-Only Jobs

As we stated above, the quality of the materials you use matters. Unless you’re a professional in the field, you can’t even access the high-quality materials necessary to do a proper remodel.

So, when a contractor offers a labor-only bid, what they are saying is that they don’t care how long your project holds together so long as it outlasts their short warranty period.

There’s also the added problem of getting too much of some materials and not enough of others. It takes a ton of experience to accurately plot how much you’ll need of what material and what types of materials are best for your space.

And when a contractor is doing a labor-only job, every extra minute is lost profit. So, if you haven’t provided everything they need, they’re more likely to make do rather than wait to get the right material on hand.

The official logo of the labor-only contractor should be a person shrugging with the words “Good Nuff” on their chest.

We will never agree to a labor-only bid. It’s a disservice to you and a potential nightmare for us. What it will never result in is a quality kitchen or bath remodel that looks as good decades later as the day we drove away – and that’s the only result we accept from ourselves.

3) No Oversight

Few Kansas City kitchen and bath remodeling companies are willing to spend their money on professional oversight. If you’re lucky, the owner may stop by once or twice to check on their subcontractors, but they are looking for progress – not mistakes.

And since many of the smaller contractors are understaffed, there is no oversight at all until the final walkthrough. But by then, all the items and mistakes that can cause real trouble are hidden behind all the pretty tile and flooring.

Each Jericho client gets a project manager who oversees each stage of the process. And when they walk through your project, they try to find mistakes. They believe in only two options – done right or done wrong.

The key is to catch what’s wrong before it gets hidden behind the shiny stuff – and our project managers take their jobs seriously.

We’ve even had moments when the homeowner is thrilled, but our Project Manager sees something ever so slightly askew and insists it is fixed before they’ll sign off on the project.

Happy clients are great – but wrong is wrong, and wrong doesn’t get to stay in a Jericho Home Improvements project. Ever.

Are You Ready For True Excellence?

If you dream of a more spa-like bathroom or a kitchen fit to fill chef’s with envy in your Kansas City area home, contact us at Jericho Home Improvements for a free quote.