Ask Audrey: Building a Contingency Plan for Your Renovation

Ask Audrey: A lot of people know that renovation projects can and will go over schedule and budget. With that in mind, what's a safe buffer to keep in order to handle potential extra costs and time constraints?

Everyone needs a contingency plan. You’ll want to leave yourself room in all aspects of a project, but most especially in time and money.

As a rule of thumb, plan to have 15-20% of your total budget set aside for a contingency fund. This could be on top of your original budget or a part of your original budget. Honestly, I prefer for both the client and the contractor to include this in their budget. Once you open the walls up during a remodel or renovation, a myriad of things can come up that would have been impossible to predict beforehand. This is normal.

Aside from that, you'll find that you may want to change your mind as the process goes on - and you should leave yourself the time and money to do so. Once you start seeing things come together during a renovation, you’ll begin to imagine more possibilities. The time between demolition and construction is one of my favorite times in a project - when the client can start to see what we’ve been drawing and talking about. This is the time when your space is a blank slate and that can bring up a lot more ideas.

Keeping a time buffer is important as well. Any renovation impacts your life in more ways than just having a contractor on site for x amount of days, weeks, or months. I recommend multiplying the original time estimate by 1.5-2 in order to get the most realistic time estimate. This isn’t because contractors are trying to scam you, it’s just that a project isn't as simple as the time that the contractor and their crews are on site. Between the time you start working with a designer or architect and the time the contractor begins working, you’ll need to be around to let contractors and subcontractors on site to prepare for their parts of the project.

Once the project officially starts, there’s a possibility that something completely unexpected could derail your original schedule. For example, I was trying to get a countertop in time for a client to have Thanksgiving dinner at their house when an embargo at particular port made it impossible to get our materials to the U.S, forcing us to reconsider what we’d already purchased. Although there was a lot of planning that had gone into the material ordering process, we had to regroup and restart in a completely different direction, which cost us time. That certainly wasn't something we could have seen coming!

Remember, life happens. Make extra room with time and money and you can be sure the unexpected doesn’t stop your project in its tracks!