Learn an essential skill Homeowners can use to save money and time on their Home Makeover projects.
On our elephant theme, a couple of weeks ago, we discussed the ingredients for an elephant feast and today I'm going to be focusing on fruit. The one, particular fruit that appears on every Home Makeover project.
You've almost certainly encountered if you've ever done any kind of Home Makeover before ... BUT, I bet you haven't ever thought about it in quite the way we'll be doing today.
Have you ever heard the phrase "Keeping up with the Jones'" ? Basically, it refers to the social comparisons between neighbours, who struggle to keep up with or hopefully outdo their neighbours.
There are at least five competing stories which offer explanations about where the phrase originated, including as you'd expect wealthy neighbours named Jones and even a comic strip creator in 1913. All of them suggest it originated more than 100 years ago.
Truth is, neighbouring Homeowners have been struggling to keep up with each other probably since we first built "houses" or pitched tents or occupied caves in the mountains. But for at least the last hundred years, we've been "keeping up with the Jones' " !!
Anyway, what do the Jones' and a particular fruit have to do with Home Makeovers ?
Our main focus of the past few Blog Posts has been on project costs - we started with a bird's-eye view; then we got gritty and granular.
Today, as we continue our expose of Home Makeover Project costs, I'm going to teach you an invaluable skill, that will be massively useful on any Home Makeover Project you attempt - any project, any size, anywhere in the world.
Keeping up with the Jones' is about comparisons. And when we consider anything and everything on Home Makeover Projects, "comparing" is an activity, a process, that happens over and over again. It's impossible to avoid and it's integral with achieving Home Makeover Project success. So we clearly need to know how to do it and do it effectively.
Whenever we compare two or more things and what they cost, we need to make sure we are comparing similar things, things that have a similar performance or functionality, that have a similar quality, and so on. And the reason is because cost is driven by those factors.
Note that we are comparing the items themselves for function, purpose, what they're made of, etc., etc. as well as their cost. This principle also applies to comparing composite items.
“Composite items” include lots of items or parts or is made up of various components - like materials, labour and plant or machinery.
When we compare two items or composite items, how do we always describe what we're doing ? And this is when the fruit I talked about at the beginning of today’s episode magically appears, just as it does sooner or later on every Home Makeover Project. That's right, we say we are comparing "apples-with-apples".
Are you familiar with that phrase ? If not, it simply means we're comparing two similar things.
BUT ...
Comparing apples-with-apples has a huge, hidden trap for anyone who doesn't know anything about apples.
Did you know there are around 7,500 apple varieties in the world - around 2,500 are grown in North America and a similar number in the United Kingdom. So even when we compare apples-with-apples, we're probably not actually comparing two identical things - rather they are just similar.
The Home Makeover skill I want to share today is how to compare those things you have to buy for any and every Home Makeover project. In today’s Blog Post I can only provide an overview - but it will be enough to make sure you at least know what to do when you buy anything and everything for your Home Makeover project.
A quick sidestep if I may ... I won't even try to get into "personal choice" ... obviously, when comparing things, there are both the objective "facts" and subjective "feelings" to consider. I'll be focusing on the facts not the feelings.
In Home Makeovers, you have to start with purpose, function, performance, size, materials, durability, guarantee period - all the objective, factual stuff. Once you've found two very similar or identical things, then you can decide if what they look like really matters or not. If you do choose the more beautiful and inevitably more expensive option, at least do so with your eyes open. If you don't save money on that item, at least you know why. And that's OK.
Applying the powerful strategy of Aggregated Marginal Gains, which I discussed in Episode 7, means we need to focus on the cost of every item. This will give us the opportunity to save the most money by repeatedly making carefully considered, cost-based choices. If we always favour cost over form, we'll probably save the most money but it's absolutely Okay to choose beauty when it matters over cost. But be wary and much more careful about sacrificing performance and function. And another warning ... buying cheap almost always works out as the more expensive option in the long run.
The top tip is to always buy the cheapest when comparing similar products and performance or functional differences are either minimal or don't matter. This is especially true when the item you're buying isn't visible or is not close to immediate contact. Examples of this would include choosing between two different wallboard manufacturers, insulation in roof spaces, electrical wiring and roof coverings.
So, how do we make great objective, factual comparisons.
There's a widely used phrase that says "Don't sweat the details !!". This is an expression of a "big picture" mindset. In the right circumstances, being able to focus on the big picture, can be a super-power.
On Home Makeovers, however, you need to get used to "sweating the details". It's the details that matter. It's by focusing on the details that we make good comparisons.
The word that often describes the details that need to be checked is "specification" and also "performance specification". Usefully, most manufacturer's websites will list the important things about their products you need to be aware of. They do that because they know the questions experts always ask and so less experienced buyers can usually rely on the product specification containing the most important and relevant information.
A few things to always check. I'll just highlight some of these and a few more less obvious ones.
Size - This may seem obvious but also don't forget thickness when the thickness of a material matters. This affects products like carpets, wood flooring, wall tiles and many more. Take a vinyl flooring product like floor tiles, for example.
The thickness of the tile matters because the thickness is likely to affect durability and lifespan. So when you're buying vinyl floor tiles, first decide what lifespan is sensible for your application and once you have found suitable ranges of floor tiles, then you can decide if you want to have patterned or textured or wood or stone effect.
Next, Expected Lifespan. And sometimes this can be linked to the product guarantee. For example, two different roof materials, like aluminium or plastic roof sheeting, are likely to have dramatically different lifespans - often 5 to 10 years different. Be wary of falling in love with the wide colour range of the plastic alternative because you may have to replace the roof 50% sooner than the metal alternative.
Then there's Performance. If you buy something mechanical, understanding the differences between the performance of items you are comparing is really significant. Take an air conditioning unit - the performance of the unit will determine the volume of air it can cool and also the temperature range it is capable of delivering. If you have a huge, high ceilinged great room in your home, you'll be left bitterly disappointed if the unit you select would be more appropriate for a much smaller bedroom space. It simply won't be able to adequately cope with the volume of air in the larger space. Or think about what external temperature ranges may exist - can the unit cope with extreme either hot and or cold. If your outside winter temperature regularly drops to below zero degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius below then to enjoy warm interior conditions you need a unit that is designed to heat in those conditions ... or you'll wind up chilly during winter months.
Here's another. When comparing products, sometimes it's worth comparing the suppliers themselves - take something as easy to miss as delivery charges. Consider, for example, a heavy product that's difficult to handle - something like bricks or blocks. They're often delivered on a flatbed truck on pallets. But not always. Let's say you find two similar bricks you like and compare the cost. Supplier B is marginally cheaper than Supplier A. Since you like both products, they both have similar specification, so it seems sensible to get the cheaper option.
BUT ... what if the more expensive Supplier A has a delivery crew and a flatbed with a Hiab - you know the small cranes on the back of the truck. So, included in the cost of the delivery, they'll unload the pallets and turns out they also have a pallet truck to move the pallet onto the site where you can store them and the delivery crew are willing to do that for you. Compare that to the cheaper Supplier B who just sends just a driver, no crane on the truck, no means of shifting the pallets. So you either have to have your own lifting and shifting equipment or a bunch of labourers who will unload the delivery vehicle. No surprise, this turns out to be way more expensive. It's well worth checking the service you get when you add delivery to the total cost. The $450 charge from one supplier may work out much cheaper than the $ 200 charge from another.
Staying with deliveries - even more subtle can be delivery timescales. Before confirming the order make sure you know when the items will arrive and that the timing works for your construction crew. If the cheaper option takes ten days longer to arrive and your site team have nothing to do for a few days while they wait for the product to arrive, there can be all sorts of costly consequences. Make sure you take those into account as well.
While mentioning delivery, I need to remind you about waste removal. Some products - furniture and kitchen appliances, things like TV's too, arrive wrapped in a load of plastic and cardboard and in some countries, packaging materials like polystyrene. When you're ordering a lot of these items, the volume of waste packaging quickly adds up. Having the delivery crew remove the packaging after they unwrap the items they deliver will save you time and money - either from having to pay someone else to get rid of it for you or the time and cost of doing it yourself.
And here's one more - Assembly. Lot's of suppliers - particularly in the furniture industry - sell products that are delivered flat-packed for self-assembly by the purchaser. Now that's Okay if you're buying one item. But if you are buying cupboards for three or four bedrooms and shelving and dressers and tables and so on, imagine the hours you will have to spend assembling them all, if they arrive flat-packed.
We can all place a real value on our time - just think what else you could be doing that's more valuable. Assembling furniture may not be worth the time it will take. So when you compare a made-to-order, deliver-and-install service, although it may look much more expensive up-front than a flat-pack option, if you have to pay a crew to do the assembling and installing, the cost of those assembly and installation charges could easily bring the "cheaper" total up to par or worse, cost you more.
And lastly, do consider country of origin. I remember a project where the Client ordered a load of light fittings direct from manufacturers in China. But no one had thought to check if they came wired for local use. Turns out they didn't and at the last minute, the Homeowner had to pay his electricians to swap the plugs on the electrical feed for each light fitting. That took a lot of time for skilled electricians and the Homeowner probably spent everything he had saved by opting to buy from an off-shore supplier. A local supplier at a slightly higher cost per item would have had to deliver appropriately wired fittings.
On a recent project, the Architect specified a foreign-made light fitting. Unfortunately, when the fittings arrived, the electricians refused to fit them because they didn't comply with local electrical safety regulations. If the electrician had fitted them, they could lose their licence to trade. The outcome was painful - time was lost while the problem got sorted out. But the cost hurt even more - all of the unsuitable fittings had to be dumped. It was not the supplier's problem, it wasn't the electrician's problem. So the client had to pay to buy new fittings.
So, when buying anything and everything for your Home Makeover project - compare, compare, compare. Start with specifications - use these as the basis for comparing the "facts" about each item and make sure you only select from similar items and do your comparing before you've fallen in love with a particular product. Subjective feelings too easily trump significant differences.
Comparing costs follows on once you are sure you are comparing closely similar items, products, services and so on.
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