THINGS DIYers SHOULDN'T DO

There are a few things DIYer’s shouldn’t do, whether it’s the first residential construction project or their hundredth. The general contractors at Irwin Wagner Construction in San Jose are your home remodeler experts and would love to walk you through any of your renovation ideas. Our goal is to reduce the stress of doing it yourself, and we hope our perspective on residential construction is helpful to anyone wanting to do a home remodel.

Getting the tools, supplies, and learning the trade of a general contractor is enough work on its own. Making sure everything is up to code and submitting the right documentation to the city is a whole other task DIYers might opt-out of. While we at Irwin Wagner Construction have a high amount of respect for those willing to roll their sleeves up and do something on their own, we want to help you make your project easy. 

Hiring a general contractor for your San Jose/Silicon Valley residential construction project will save you time, effort, and money. Our home remodelers are experts in the business and will manage your project with care and precision. If you do decide to DIY your home project though, there are a few pitfalls you shoulder avoid: 

• Don’t skip the permit process (it’ll mean a loss of money if you ever want to sell) 
• Don’t move foundational or structural pieces of your home without help from an engineer 
• Don’t mess with electrical or plumbing unless you know how to do it 
• Don’t get in over your head (and end up looking at an unfinished project for years to come while you try to financially recover)

If working on your own seems like too much work, we have your back. Irwin Wagner Construction can make your vision come to life. We work intimately with our clients; we use Gantt Charts to illustrate project schedules, giving you a clear expectation of when to expect certain things. Furthermore, if you would like to make changes, we use these charts to illustrate how those changes might affect the rest of the schedule and find ways to work together towards an equitable solution. 

We do weekly meetings with our clients on large projects. Each week, we come together and review the project’s details, progress, plans for the future, and actionable items for the coming week. Our clients bring their desires, plans, change orders, and anything else they want to discuss, and together we move forward to bring your project to reality. And remember, the quality of the work is essential. Look at what one of our founders, Mark Wagner, had to say about this factor: