Please for all of you who wants to Reno, please please just hire a main con/Reno company. More importantly hire a good experienced designer. Unless of course you have a lot of time. And I mean a LOT of time.

The money you save by hiring sub contractors yourself is not worth the time nor your sanity.

Very important that you hire a good designer. It is very well worth the money. Think of it this way, you are going to spend lots of money on doing your house, what is 10% more. A good designer will give you better value for your money. Spend RM100k but look like RM200k. They will find creative solutions that will give value to your home.

Think of a sub con like a driver, he knows how to make the car move, but without a good navigator(designer) he will not know where to go or what to do. A good navigator(designer) will make sure you get to where you want to go. A driver with no directions is useless. Unless of course you want to be the navigator and sit beside the driver pointing and screaming all the way...

Hiring the sub con direct 'might' save you some money. The extra that you pay for the main con/ID is for coordination and logistic. Also for accountability.

You hire sub con direct, when something goes wrong the they blame that the previous contractor didn't do it nicely. Then you will get passed around a lot. If you get a main con/ID then you just deal with one person. He will organize everything for you and if anything goes wrong you just hold him responsible.

More importantly if you get a good ID you will get a better Spatial layout. I see many DIY Reno where the extension and layout is so bad that they waste space or make some very uncomfortable space.

You will actually save money because you will get clear directions and only do something once. No rehacking, no moving wall because after you put it up it seems too small/tight or something can't fit in there. No selecting colours or tiles that you thought looks nice in the showroom/catalog but when you put it in your house it looks like crap. Get it rite first time. Good ID will also show you artist impression before you start, then you know the out come, product you will be getting.

And if they are good then your budget will be tighter. They will know all the scope of work that needs to be done and get costing for it. You will get minimal budget "surprises".

This post has been edited by Bishop: May 1 2011, 12:16 PM

Yes something like that.

To know to quality of the ID is very easy. Listen to the questions they ask. A good ID will need to ask many questions before they can do the design.

What style you want?
What space you want?
What space you need?
What you want to put here?
Why you need that?
How you want to use this space?
What you plan to do here?
Etc....

Imagine the ID like a doctor, need to know what is the problem before giving the medication.

I bad ID won't ask anything. You tell you want living and bedroom and he will say ok. The he give you design.

Imagine you go to doctor and say you are sick and he said ok and just give you Panadol .

Listen to the quality of the questions asked, will tell you the quality of the ID.

Architect by profession. Doing mostly Hotel ID these days...
I see too many bad design and too many ppl calling themselves ID but only out to make fast buck.

You are building your home, hopefully your dream home. It is worth the time to get a professional to do it. It will not always be more expensive, cause they will get you better value for your money. And save you the headache...