Kathy Maynard
Sacramento Bee

Q: We want to remodel our kitchen and have collected estimates from remodeling contractors and a custom home builder who has turned from new home construction to remodeling. The builder was referred by friends who love the house he built for them a few years ago, but his bid is so much lower than all the remodeling specialists that we wonder if we should be concerned or just consider ourselves lucky for finding someone who happens to be more “hungry” than the others.

– Tom Piper, Rio Linda

A: There can be many reasons for differences in estimates, but if all the contractors bid on the same plans and specification list of materials and most are pretty close, there is good reason to wonder about a much lower bid. Ask yourself if it might be due to cutting corners or reducing quality, says Scott Nulton, president of Nulton Remodeling Services in Sacramento.

“Remodeling is quite a different process than new construction, requiring a broader set of special skills,” he says. “My guess is that the low bid could reflect the fact that although most builders can construct beautiful new homes from the ground up with all new materials, they are not familiar with the subtleties and surprises that inevitability occur in a residential remodel.

“They’re usually not used to the complexities of working on a site where the homeowners are living, either, and that can create a lot of frustration and disappointment for everyone involved,” he says.

These days, new homes are usually built by a series of workers and subcontractors who specialize in performing a single task in the construction process, such as setting concrete forms, framing walls, hanging drywall or installing trim, then moving on to another job while a different specialist performs the next step in that house. While this system is effective for building new homes in the shortest time possible, Nulton says it doesn’t work for remodeling projects.

“Due to timing and space restrictions, remodeling specialists must possess the skills to not only work with both rough and finish carpentry, but also electrical, plumbing, lath and plaster, drywall, tile setting, masonry, flooring, painting and roofing,” he says.

They must be able to match existing materials, trims and textures so their work looks original to the building. And since they are often required to modify or build cabinets on the job site, they need to be knowledgeable about historic methods and materials.

Working conditions also differ drastically between new construction and remodeling projects. Most new construction is done on bare sites, where workers typically leave all the scraps, tile slurry, concrete slop, leftover mortar, drywall tape and mud on site until the project is complete. Only then does the landscape crew clean up the site before covering everything over with new landscaping.

“The remodeling specialist does not have the same liberty because most residential remodels are performed while the client is living in the house,” Nulton says. “This puts a demand on the workers and subcontractors to minimize noise, clutter and dirt.”

A remodeling specialist must often be aware of the people around the job site, be considerate of their feelings and remain positive. When an unforeseen condition crops up after a project is started, he must tactfully explain the situation to the homeowner and often negotiate a change order.

“Over the years, we have discovered faulty plumbing, electrical and framing, additions and remodels that were done without permits, and work that not only didn’t meet code but was unsafe as well,” he says. “It can be tough explaining why a job will cost more or take longer than we expected, but these things must be corrected before we can proceed.”

Such was the case when Nulton Remodeling Services updated the kitchen and master bathroom of the 1,850-square-foot home of Steve and Sherri Noss in Orangevale. Other than a strangely placed wall at the end of the kitchen counter and a poorly constructed archway between the dining room and kitchen, there were no obvious red flags as to what lay beneath the surfaces. But the first of many surprises arose before the project even started.

While applying for the permits to do the remodel, Nulton learned that there was no record of the 55-year-old home ever existing on the property, nor had any permits been obtained for the assorted “improvements” that Nulton discovered as the job progressed.

“We live on 1½ acres that was originally part of 20 acres that got split up. We think our house might have been a bunkhouse at one time that was added onto over the years,” says Sherri Noss. “We really had no idea until Scott told us that he could tell it had been enlarged. The kitchen had been previously remodeled by enclosing a rear porch and he thinks a sconce in my daughter’s room was once the front porch light.”

The next unexpected issue came after tearing out the kitchen cabinets, appliances and floor tile, when Nulton found a leaking hot water pipe running down the inside of the siding into a garden. Opening the wall to repair the leaky pipe revealed that dry rot had destroyed the bottom plate of the interior wall framing, so it had to be completely reframed.

“The dry rot was caused by water oozing up through cracks in the concrete slab so we also had to replace that with a new one with proper moisture barrier,” Nulton says. “While removing the defective slab, we noticed that there were no footings on the bearing wall, adding yet another change order.”

The strange wall in the middle of the kitchen turned out to be a support for the undersized ceiling framing that a heating contractor decided to use to hold up an attic furnace, he says. Another change order was necessary to correct the framing of the ceiling and many other areas throughout the house due to improper construction over the years.

Although all the unforeseen conditions extended a three-month project to four and increased the cost by almost 20 percent, the owners were pleased with the process as well as the results of both the kitchen and master bath projects, which were each awarded Contractor of the Year awards by the Sacramento Chapter of NARI.

“We bought this house in 2003 and it’s basically been a money pit. We had sewage problems, we woke up to flooding in our dining room on New Year’s Day because the grading in the front of our house was improperly done, and we had all these really weird things going on in our kitchen,” Noss says. “But now we’re really happy.”

The Nosses reconfigured the kitchen cabinets and counters, added a professional six burner range, a warming drawer and a farmhouse sink.

Says Sherri Noss: “I love my new kitchen, it’s really awesome.”