The Glam World of General Contracting

Many times on projects, little SNAFU’s happen. It’s my job to handle the SNAFU’s and make sure the customer doesn’t notice or get upset about them.

Sometimes the problems that arise are just the nature of the remodeling beast, but sometimes there is someone to blame. When a homeowner hires a general contractor (GC), they are hiring a pro who will handle these SNAFU’s along with managing the project.

At our total home reno project in Whitemarsh yesterday, the countertop templater was out to measure for new stone kitchen and bathroom counter tops. Here is a snap of him in action.

We’re just doing a kitchen freshening up since the cabinets are fairly new and layout is OK. The scope for this room is new pendant light for eating area, the new countertops, new tile backsplashes, new hardwood floors, new outlets and switches, new appliances, proper vent hood, and new trim at the floor. In general, we will make it look a little more upscale and use better, long-lasting materials where we are replacing things.

The templater, in this case, made thin, plywood templates of the shapes he would need the stone counters to be. On these templates, he marked the sink and cooktop location, corners, other cut outs, type of edges, and where the seams go. All of the countertop details are noted on these thin strips of wood that he hot glues together.

Many homeowners don’t know there will usually be a seam in a countertop, since the raw material only comes in particular shapes and sizes, while kitchens come in varied shapes and sizes. Someone on our team always draws up a scale drawing with the details, which goes into an on-site project binder. We, along with the templater, go over the drawings on site, making sure we understand each other. This usually takes about an hour. Then, he goes to work making the templates, and we stay out of his way so he can concentrate, as a mistake in stone is very expensive.

For our new countertops, we will be installing under-mounted stainless sinks from Elkay — good stuff. Typically, the countertop templater wants to leave with the sink and/or the template for that sink. Since all sinks are different, they use the sink template to shape the sink cut out. This helps them to ensure the sink is properly mounted to the stone so it does not drop out.

Our plumbing supplier didn’t give us the sinks in time for the templater yesterday morning. We just got the sinks today = SNAFU.

Our templater can turn countertop orders around in 10 days or less, and they do a beautiful job at great prices. That’s why we work with them. Other stone suppliers take two to three weeks, minimum. To be this quick, our company, as GC, has to make sure we give our stone templater everything he needs, like sinks. That’s our job.

The result of this SNAFU? Today, I was at the job site early to collect the sinks from my crew in Whitemarsh, and then I was off to the stone cutters location near Philly International Airport in a giant industrial park (I got lost) to drop off the sinks. Once there, I had to make sure the fabricator put our project number on the boxes, too, since they are running dozens of projects at a time. Part of my job is anticipating problems like lost sinks, even though this has never happened, and our fabricator runs a very organized shop.

This story is one SNAFU of a simple project, one of dozens of similar projects we handle every year.