Who to contact?

[Silverwood]

Hi Everyone,

So I'm pretty handy but with this house I'm in now I'm not to sure where to start.  There are things that blend into other areas of the house and some things I'm not sure I can even do.

I think I need to speak to a general contractor? I'm not sure if I can just post an ad on Kijiji?  Should I go to Home depot? I don't have money for major renovations atm but need to know where to start and a general idea of costs. 

So who should I be talking to and how do I go about doing this? Do I pay someone for their time? 

Thanks a bunch

[Reynolds531]

You sketch it out, break down into major projects with separate break points. And then down into smaller mini projects. Then price every part of it and set priorities.

Above all tackle just one thing at a time if its just you and do quality work.

[BlackAngel]

You can talk to the guys that work at Home Depot or Lowe's. A lot of the time they have experience in the trades and can point you in the right direction and offer ideas. Check with the Contractor desk for the pros.

[paddedhat]

I did this for a client who relocated a few hours away. I had no interest in doing the work for them, as it wasn't practical to travel so far. I, travelled to a true fixer-upper they had bought,  spent an afternoon with them, listen to their ideas, offered suggestions, and provided an outline of how to proceed. It cost them a couple of hundred bucks, but it was money well spent, as I steered them away from some expensive and not so good ideas that they had come up with, and toward far more reasonable solutions.  I'm sure that you could make similar arrangements with a local remodeler. Find somebody with a good reputation (hint, it typically isn't the guy standing in the big box store, making $10/hr) and ask them if they could do an hour or two of consulting, for a reasonable fee. Good luck.

[Dicey]

Do you have Nextdoor.com in your area? If not, look into starting one. Lots pf people are willing to share their expertise and contacts in order to support the good local providers.

[thurston howell iv]

I'm in the middle of a full house renovation. What we did was to sit down and decide what we wanted to change and why. Then we would shop around and price the things we wanted to change. We also checked out you tube to watch others do these "projects" to get an idea of what extra items we might need that we hadn't thought about.

I did end up hiring a small family crew as what I mostly needed was man-power. They also had some great ideas for saving me cash or optimizing our projects.

Best piece of advice I can give is figure the time and budget and double or triple it. There's always unexpected surprises. Always.