Confident Home Remodelers continues to excel at Interior Remodeling, including kitchens, bathrooms, basements, attics, framing, sheetrock, and painting. During the Winter months, when it is often too cold, too rainy, or too snowy, we love to have a good “inside the house” project. Sometimes mid-summer is good as well for indoor projects. Bathrooms in particular are time-intensive and very low-profit jobs for us. Yes, we do them, and we are great at them, but economically we cannot sacrifice the time away from windows and doors in our busiest Spring and Fall months

DO YOU NEED A LICENSED PLUMBER, ELECTRICIAN, or ARCHITECT: Homeowners in New Jersey are allowed to do their own plumbing and electrical, but you still need permits and inspections. Only a homeowner or an architect can submit a drawing to a building department. They won’t accept drawings from a contractor.  Getting an architect is smart for the homeowner, because the plans are essentially an addendum to the contract. An approved architect’s plans are your protection that the contractor will do all the work needed. Make sure the town approves the completed project before you give the final payment to the contractor. We are totally unphased and untroubled by that, because we do good work. Other contractors will never give that advice to their customers. If the architect adds something to the project that is not part of the contract Scope of Work (they always do), the contractor will charge more for it.

PERMITS & INSPECTIONS: A gut-remodel bathroom or kitchen involves permits and inspections, and the whole process of submitting paperwork and getting building permits takes weeks or months, depending on the town. Building departments in small quiet towns in Northern Bergen County are the easiest to deal with, and the most accommodating to their homeowners. Building Departments in places undergoing a lot of multi-unit construction, are spending all their time reviewing and inspecting those big buildings. In some cases, if you want to do a bathroom in the winter, it’s best to sign the contract in August or September, and get the architect involved ASAP.There is an enormous price difference for a project done with or without permits and inspections. The big cost is not the cost of the permits, or even the architect cost. It’s the cost of the delays in the job. This is why customers hear horror stories of kitchens taking months to complete.

TEANECK BUILDING DEPARTMENT: The most aggressive Building Department in the State of New Jersey is Teaneck. I sign more contracts in Teaneck than any other town. Most people buying homes in Teaneck are former tenants from The Bronx or Queens, and the idea of getting permits or inspections is outside of their life experience. Many Teaneck houses look OK on the outside, but are in worse condition inside than the same houses in Bogota and Bergenfield. Teaneck more than any other community wants everything permitted, and they want architect plans. Teaneck even wants to inspect the screws on boards of sheetrock before spackling is applied. Teaneck is super-tough on front porch enclosures and decks, which are the two types of projects that Bronx-to-Teaneck homeowners most want to do without permits or inspections. Teaneck will make the homeowner rip out projects done without permits. And they are really tough on anything termite-related once the inspector steps inside.

WE DON’T FLOAT PROJECTS FROM ONE TO THE OTHER: Each project is financially self-supporting. We never spend a customer’s deposit on the final costs for the last customer’s project, and then relay on a future customer’s deposit to pay for your labor and material. Never. We think that’s totally mindless, and bad business. We are pretty conservative with YOUR MONEY. The money you give us is for your project specifically. We don’t float projects from one to the other, and that’s why we are still in business. Contractors who play that game go out of business.