Sharing my personal experience of house decoration.

Good houses are too expensive, and I can't afford the "dream home", so I have to buy an old and small house and plan to hire someone to decorate it myself.

There are two types of decorators, one is a contractor with a construction license, and the other is a contractor without a license; and decoration is also divided into licensed and unlicensed.

It costs a considerable amount of money to apply for a license, and the town will also send staff to check the construction quality. If there is no license, the town will fine and demolish it, but generally "the government will not investigate unless the people report it." The license must be obtained by the construction personnel, and unlicensed decorators are not qualified to apply for a license.

In summary, there are several combinations: license plus license, the most expensive; license plus no license, the second most expensive; no license plus no license, the cheapest. The above is the background of the American decoration market.

When I started decorating, I first found several licensed contractors on the Internet.

My house is a single-family villa with two floors upstairs and downstairs, a total of about 200 square meters.

The whole house is carpeted. Except for the kitchen, there are no chandeliers in other rooms because the house is old and the wall insulation is very thin. In addition, the kitchen and bathroom are very old and the circuits are also aging, which poses a safety hazard.

So I want to replace the wooden floor of the whole house, add chandeliers in all rooms, thicken the wall insulation, then paint all the walls and roofs, replace the kitchen and bathroom with brand new ones, and redo the circuits of the whole house. It is almost a whole house renovation, which is a big project.

To be on the safe side, I chose a licensed contractor and applied for a license. The labor cost is expensive, so after many estimates and bargaining, we finally agreed on a total price of 150,000 US dollars, including labor and materials, and indicated the brands of all building materials.

I thought it was already very safe, but I didn’t expect that there were pitfalls everywhere in the decoration process. The matter of pitfalls really does not distinguish between nationalities.

The first pitfall: playing word games in the contract

After negotiating with the contractor, we signed the contract. I thought the contract was clearly written and there would be no problems. Who knew that the first pitfall we encountered was about the contract.

After the initial cooperation negotiations, when signing the contract, I found that it was written that the lighting, walls and floors of the entrance and corridor would be charged separately, and it was not cheap.

It was clearly agreed that the whole house would be renovated, why were these places charged separately? I called to inquire, and the contractor said that it was agreed that all rooms would be renovated, but the entrance and corridor were not considered rooms, so of course I could choose not to renovate this part.

Real shot

I really had a question mark face. This was the first time I heard that the whole house decoration did not include the entrance and corridor, but it was already at the stage of signing the contract, and I didn’t want to toss, so I had to pay more.

After signing the contract with great difficulty, there were termites during the construction process.

The paint brand was Benjamin Moore written on the contract, but the workers painted the garage with a different brand. After asking, I found out: the contract did not mention what brand of garage paint was.

That’s not all. The kitchen and bathroom were renovated, but the doors were old, which was not only unreasonable, but also looked ugly.

The problem is: the contract only mentioned bathroom cabinets, bathtub/shower glass doors, floors, walls, lighting, and hardware, but did not mention changing doors.

Well, it's my fault again. But the old door was too ugly, and I had to replace the door frame to replace it, which was too troublesome. I had to paint it once and use it again. Now every time I see the old door, I get angry!

When I checked the house after the renovation, I found that the skirtings of the house were all shabby and had not been painted or replaced. I asked and found out that the contract said that the roof and walls should be painted, but the skirtings were not painted. Painting would cost another 2,000 yuan.