Host: Welcome to The Home Remodeling Show with Edge Construction. You can learn more at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. Mike, how are you doing this morning? Mike: Good. How about you? Host: Doing well. You guys are posting on Houzz all the time. Mike: We try. Right now we are a little in between on the social media side, so our designers are picking up the slack, and they are awfully busy. But Houzz is still my favorite place to go. We have somewhere around 200 projects on there now, and it is an easy format for me to use. Our website is great, but websites only get updated every so often, and it is hard to carry over everything you have done through the years. With Houzz, you can go back ten years or more and see the work we were doing. I like that because I want to see how our designs are holding up over time. There is also just so much homeowner information there. It has really become a clearinghouse. Host: And people all over the world are looking at your work there, which is kind of amazing. Mike: It is. If somebody has a picture in their head, Houzz is a great place to refine it. If you want a custom built-in bookcase, for example, you can search for that, add a style like Craftsman, and start narrowing in on what you really like. Then you can hand that to a builder, remodeler, or carpenter and say, “This is what I mean.” It makes a huge difference. We use it too. Sometimes it helps us find products, techniques, and ideas. Host: And that is often homework you give homeowners too, right? Mike: Absolutely. If I come to your house for the first time and you want to do a kitchen or a master bath and you say, “I do not know what I want,” I will probably tell you to go down the rabbit hole a little bit. Designers can pick up a lot just by seeing your furniture, your artwork, your colors, and the things you have chosen over the years, but it is also helpful when a homeowner does a little homework. Host: Before we really get into this week’s topic, we got sidetracked talking about some staircase work you have been doing lately. Those projects were amazing. You were telling me those are built piece by piece. Mike: Yes, pretty much from scratch. There are some prebuilt systems out there, but I can usually spot them right away. They get the job done, but they are not the same. A lot of times we end up spending more time fitting those than we would have spent just building it from scratch. Justin, who has been with me since he was about twenty and is now one of our best finish carpenters, runs our trim crew. Those guys do stair work all the time. In new construction alone, they might do ten or twelve staircases a week. Most are pretty standard, but the ones he sent me videos of recently were really special, with lots of open rail sections, full wood treads, and some more contemporary metal balusters. It is nice for homeowners to see that, because if we can do a house with thirteen sections of open rail, we can absolutely handle a house with three. Host: And you can really see the design thinking in those projects too, especially in how transitions and landings are handled. Mike: Exactly. Sometimes homeowners just need to see how those awkward areas can be solved. One of those staircases was more Craftsman in style, with painted wood balusters. The other was a little more contemporary, with metal balusters. Different materials, different colors, different looks. It gives people something concrete to react to. Host: We have even seen things like cable systems over the years. Are those still around? Mike: They are, but I think they are ebbing a bit. I like the look, but I do not love doing them. They are hard to get just right. When you tighten one cable, another one wants to loosen. Homeowners understandably want them all tight like piano wire, but that is tough to maintain. Inspectors have also pushed back on them in some areas because of code issues. So yes, I like the look, but they are definitely more of a challenge. Host: This week we are really talking about choosing the right builder, and a lot of that is about fit. Remodeling is a relationship, isn’t it? Mike: It is. It is a little like a marriage for a while. You sign a contract, and now you are working together for months. You need to establish how you are going to communicate, where people are going to park, how the crew is going to act on the job, and what the expectations are. We talk about that a lot internally. We just finished a very nice remodel in a very old house on Dayton Street downtown, and I joked with the crew that maybe we should move right next door because of how much we had been there. I think I would have had a revolt. Parking alone on a job like that can wear people down. It is a beautiful area, but there are real challenges working on the Isthmus. Host: And that is a great point. Madison has so many different neighborhoods and housing types. Working in an old downtown house is very different from working out in the country or even in another part of town. Mike: It really is. Madison has some very distinct pockets, and the closer you get to the Capitol, the more unique the challenges can be. There may be historical rules. Parking can be difficult. Access is harder. And inside the house, you may be dealing with completely different mechanical systems, trim profiles, plaster, or old wiring. On one recent downtown job, we had to reproduce some woodwork in our own shop because we could not find the right profile quickly enough elsewhere. So yes, it is very fair for a homeowner to ask whether a contractor has worked on that type of house before. Host: And along with that, a contractor should be asking good questions too. Mike: Absolutely. If I am walking into an older home, I want to know what has been updated. Do you still have a lead water service? Has the electrical panel been updated? Is there knob-and-tube wiring? Is the plaster loose anywhere? Those are all clues. The newer the house, the easier the job generally is. Once you get into those one-hundred-year-old neighborhoods, experience matters a lot more. Host: One of the things that really stands out with Edge Construction is how much of your business seems to come from repeat customers and referrals. Mike: It is a big part of what we do. Somewhere around fifty percent of our work is either repeat customers or very close referrals. If we did your kitchen and now your sibling wants to do theirs, that kind of thing. That helps a lot because the homeowner already has a sense of what they are getting. There is less of that awkward early stage where nobody really knows each other yet. In this business, there is so much bad news and so many horror stories that it helps when someone you trust can say, “These people did good work for us.” Host: And if somebody has been working in this area for a long time and doing bad work, there would be evidence of that too. Mike: There should be. If someone has really been causing problems for years, it should not be hard to find. There should be reviews, comments, complaints, or some kind of history out there. Host: You mentioned earlier the idea of specialization, and that seems like a good thing for homeowners to ask about too. Mike: I think so. Especially early on, I really believe in getting good at something before you branch out. When times get a little tough economically, you start seeing trucks and vans that claim to do everything from custom homes to bathrooms to decks. Maybe they can do some of all that, but it is fair to ask what they are actually best at. When I started on the remodeling side, we focused mostly on interior projects like kitchens, baths, basements, and interior remodels. We always had the team to branch out more, but I wanted to get really good at that first. So if somebody is advertising that they do everything, it is totally fair to ask them to show you examples of the kind of project you want. Host: It really is like any other specialty. Just because two people are both in construction does not mean they do the same kind of work at the same level. Mike: Exactly. We were even joking about that internally. We have a master electrician, Dale, and I made the point that asking somebody else on the team to do one of his really technical electrical jobs would be like asking him to do one of our specialty staircases. We are all in construction, but that does not mean we all have the same skill set. Host: Another thing that matters is having one clear point of responsibility. That seems huge for homeowners. Mike: It is. That is one of the big advantages of using a general contractor in the first place. We occasionally do white-box work, where we take something to drywall stage and then the homeowner or another trade takes over, but we do not love doing that because the lines of responsibility get messy. If a homeowner is trying to manage all the trades themselves, pulling permits, coordinating schedules, and dealing with inspections, they are the responsible party. If something goes wrong, they are the one in the middle. With a general contractor, there should be one main point of responsibility. If a flooring subcontractor does something the homeowner does not like, yes, the subcontractor will hear about it, but we are really the ones who are going to hear about it, because we are the ones responsible for the whole job. Host: And that also ties into the trade partners you work with. There are certain people you go to because you know what you are getting. Mike: Exactly. We do a lot in-house, which gives us more control. We do drywall, electrical, flooring, cabinets, and a lot of other work ourselves. But there are still certain specialty items, like glass, where we are obviously going to use a trusted subcontractor. And the reason we use those people is because we know their employees, we know their standards, and we know they do it right. The homeowner does not have to go out and find those people themselves. That is part of what we are bringing to the table. Host: At the end of a project, you also do a lot of follow-up. You want the feedback, do you not? Mike: We do. It is great to walk into a finished space and see how beautiful it turned out, but it is even better when the homeowner is really happy. Sometimes they will pull up an old picture on their phone and say, “Do you remember what this used to look like?” and that is a great feeling. But I also think it is important to talk through the project honestly at the end. Nobody is promising a rose garden. Everybody is doing the best they can, and when something goes wrong, what matters is how you react to it. These last few years especially, manufacturing has been a challenge. Products have shown up damaged, packaged poorly, or just not quite right. It is getting better now, but there is still a little of that we have to work through. That changes how we schedule and how we finish things out. Host: And I think that is one of the harder parts for homeowners sometimes, that last mile of the project. It may look done, but there are still little details that matter. Mike: That is exactly right. I like that phrase, the last mile. It can be hard to be patient at the end, because from a homeowner’s perspective it may look like the space is done. But those last little adjustments, touch-ups, alignments, and details are what really make the project feel finished. Host: If folks want to see some of the work we talked about today, from staircases to whole remodels, head over to EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is EdgeConstructionCompany.com. You can also click through to Houzz, Pinterest, and Facebook from there. And if you are thinking about remodeling, give them a call at 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.