Article Title: Home improvement

Excerpt: -- Get ready to wait and prepare to pay. We waited an entire year for the contractor we wanted. The market is busier than ever and good contractors have waiting list. A contractor who is at the ready and/or really cheap is unlikely to do a good job. He could be an outright scam artist, a bad carpenter, or just a bad businessman. Some excellent carpenters underprice their services and then can't really afford to complete the quality job in a timely manner. Or they promise to start next week and then make you wait for months, after you've paid a deposit, before they actually show up. Use the wait-time to really think through what you want and what you don't want.

-- Separate the money from the work. It may be a year before your contractor shows up with his levels and his hammers, but mortgage rates are going up. If you intend to borrow, start shopping for your loan now. You can lock in a good fixed-rate loan and bank the money until the job starts. Don't (do I need to say this?) invest in anything risky like stocks or bonds with money you expect to be spending within a year. And don't get your financing from your contractor. Occasionally this may work out, but more often the contractor is using the loan as a profit center. Dishonest contractors often bury costly, fee-laden loans in their building contracts, says the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

-- Protect yourself with a good contract and some extra planning. Make sure your homeowners insurance covers your home during construction, and that your contractor is covered for accidents that could happen on the job. Write a long contract, and spell out everything from the kinds of light switches you want to the work schedule you expect the contractor to keep. If you don't, you will get to a day when the contractor tells you he expected to use one cheap lightbulb in the family room and you tell him you were counting on halogen recessed lights. The more you spell out, the fairer the job will be for both of you. Don't try to insert a penalty in the contract for a contractor who takes too long. He wants to finish too. Penalties at the end of a job just incentivize him to quit before it's done if something delays the project.

-- Be careful about adding more while the project is under way. The most expensive words in home improvement are "while you're there..." But sometimes a mid-course correction or addition is just the right thing. Adding central air while the walls are all open makes sense. Fixing a bad foundation while you're putting on an addition is necessary. Deciding to throw in a whole other bathroom or deck midway through doesn't always make sense. And it will cost you.