Episode 38 - Mastering the Art of Homebuilding: Exploring Apprenticeships, Pricing Strategies, and Interior Design

Ready to demystify the world of homebuilding and remodeling? This episode promises to equip you with valuable insights and practical knowledge from my own construction companies. We're tackling some major topics - from the significance of apprenticeships to the art of pricing jobs considering labor, materials, and subcontractors. In addition, the Kirby team shares how they have adapted their allowances, and we're also sending some love to the 40 contractors that tagged our post on the Homebuilding and Remodeling Show Facebook page. 

Our conversation takes a fascinating turn as we examine the remodeling and design process for a sports academy. Discover how an apprenticeship can streamline the process, and why investing in quality materials guarantees long-lasting results. Hold on to your hard hats as we reveal how color use can not only brighten the facility but also maintain a timeless aesthetic. Plus, we're spicing things up with a co-host in our popular "Shop Talk" segment, where we take on trending topics in homebuilding and remodeling - discussing everything from estimating costs to growing a successful business without compromising on quality. It's an episode you can't afford to miss!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The Homebuilding and Remodeling Show. Let's go. Welcome everybody to the Homebuilding and Remodeling Show. My name is Chris Kirby and I'll be your host. I am the owner of three construction companies on the Alabama Gulf Coast. The show is about residential construction. We're going to cover topics of homebuilding and remodeling. Are you thinking of doing a remodel or building a home? Are you a contractor looking to improve your knowledge base or grow your business? Have you ever done a remodel project or built a home? There were so many things you wish you knew or that you could have done differently during the process. Then this show is for you. We break down the process of building and remodeling and how to have the best results during your project. Whether you are a DIYer looking for tips, someone looking to hire a contractor to do a project, or a contractor looking to expand your knowledge base or your business, welcome aboard. Glad to have you. Stay tuned. We kick off the show with my thoughts on homebuilding and remodeling. I'll share best practices and talk about some of our experiences in business and out in the field. These shared thoughts and lessons learned are meant to help you on your very own journey.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Let's go, and we have to have the structure of an apprenticeship program in place and we need to go ahead and set this thing up. And luckily I had a frame of reference from the military, from the Navy, from their apprenticeship programs that I was able to use and adapt here. We just kind of went on ahead and set it up. We gave all the young what we call apprentices, we set a mark and gave them binders and we went on ahead and started calling them apprentices and we set up that apprentice one, apprentice two, you know path for them. We laid out an entire career path for them and I honestly think that they're very excited to adopt that and adapt that and move forward. Yes, it's very hard to get started, but you could do anything that you want in construction and so our team gets paid.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Well, I knew for us to get the right people in the door young, old, male, female that was irrelevant. I wanted people with the right mindset, and so to do that, I knew that if you get a grown man or woman walking in the door that has children at home, paying them 10, 11 dollars wasn't going to cut it. Well, chris, you can't pay him more than that because yada, yada, right. No, that's not right. So what we did is we start them out at $17 an hour and then from there they get 50 cents every thousand hours. So basically a thousand hours equates to about six months, and so 50 cents every six months and then that's a dollar a year. And so you know from there. That was the pay portion. And they go apprentice one, apprentice two and all the way up. If you look at organizations such as Nari, the National Association of the World Modeling Industry, you can become a master remodeler through them and you have to have 10 years to do that. Well, our apprenticeship aligns with that. In our apprenticeship you can go from apprentice to adjournment and you can same thing 20,000 hours or 10 years. You become a master remodeler through our company.

Speaker 1: 3:49

The way that we've done it is we've had to say here's all the tasks that you may encounter during remodeling and here's what you need to do. So it's repetition, right. Each task they go in and they do it a series of times. They discuss it, observe, perform with supervisor, perform independently. Then they start to self-correct and then they become a master, and that's for each task along the way. So if they need to lay tile, then they're going to discuss, observe, perform with supervision, perform independently, self-correct and then master.

Speaker 1: 4:26

This is our new contractor shout-out segment. We are going to pick 40 contractors a month that tag their business page and our post on the home building and remodeling show Facebook page. And this month we have with us LeBron Construction out of Chester, pennsylvania, ashwood. Working. Out of Waterford, wisconsin. One for all service out of Flowery Branch, georgia. View for Tanyman Services out of Kaplan, louisiana, inside Out Property Solutions in Marlton, new Jersey. Thank you all for commenting on the monthly post. We will do another post next month. Like, subscribe and share our Facebook page and hopefully you get a shout-out next time.

Speaker 1: 5:12

And now we move into Shop Talk. It's the portion of the show where I bring in a co-host and we cover trending topics in home building and remodeling. Hope you enjoy. Let's go. All right, welcome back everybody.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Today We've got good old Adam back with us and we're gonna dive straight in to kind of what we've been doing here at Kirby and hopefully you all can relate to that. So we've been talking recently about. So here we have a lot of W2 employees, right? So in construction you can't a lot of people use subcontractors and they're the primary contractor, right? So for us we have in-house employees we're at almost 30 now Because we've brought on some electricians a master electrician, master plumber and a team under them. But what we were looking at is how we price our jobs, and it makes a big difference in what we do, because Flow of a project and flow of the money in, money out are super important, right? So when you're going out to estimate and you're looking at our cost, there's basically three components to it, or four, because you have Our costs for labor so our team are one, two, three people teams that go out and actually do the Install right, and then you look at all the modern materials yes.

Speaker 1: 6:44

And then you look at subcontractors right, and then we do.

Speaker 3: 6:50

We used to give all Alliances, now we just give allowances on product that we carry right, the mostly yes, just like the tile, some of the pretty stuff, and I you know if it's Somebody that's not capable of picking up something sure. I will offer that if long as they pick it out, purchase it, will go and get it, house it, you know, yeah, especially for the like elderly people and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 7:17

So you know, you go out and do your estimate, but you're looking at the actual cost to do the job and for us that's labor, that's material, that's the allowance cost, that's the sub cost, what we've done over time as we've grown, because not only are we a company that is growing, but we grow the pay of our people, right, right. So it's apprenticeship style. So we look at it and say we bring somebody in, so anybody that comes into us as an apprentice. One starts at $17 17. They get a pay raise every 1000 hours. Okay, so in order for us to keep up with that, right, we look at and say, okay, we're at three crews, we want to grow to four crews. Well, you need a crew leader and a helper. Helper, right, so it takes two people. Those crews pay for themselves. However, when you are growing the pay of the helper from 17 to 18, 18 to 19, then the crew leaders, 25, 26, 27 hours an hour.

Speaker 1: 8:23

You factor that in and in order to sustain a growing company and retain the talent that we need, we have to increase their pay raises, which increases our costs, taxes being W2, all of the associated things that come with paying people. Well, correct, right, so we get into this habit where we want to win Every job because you know if you've got a lot of work, you can sustain a lot of people and stuff like that. But what we've started looking at heavily are margins right, okay, and we run reports through QuickBooks after the job is done, and I think it's 27 or 25 percent is Good for us. Anything over that is really probably great, yeah, and so that just covers our overhead, because we have receptionists and an accountant and those types of stuff that are associated with running the business the way we run our business. But you, we were hesitant for a long time to increase our prices, right, right. So how do you price our labor? Just so everybody knows, and, like, you don't have to talk about the dollars, but you can talk about how you do it.

Speaker 3: 9:40

So we have a set base price for two people for a week's worth of labor. So I go in, you know, assess everything and get a great the best. I can not great, you know, of how long the length of the job should take.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Right. So, for instance, you're saying you walk in and most of we focus on kitchen and bath. So most of what we do is kitchen and bath related. The reason we focus on that niche is so we can systemize it. So you now have the ability, as the estimator, project manager, you can walk in and say this will take what a week. Yeah, we can have something Right, so something else we do, though, is, if it takes seven business days, right.

Speaker 3: 10:29

How do you do that? We're going to charge for two full weeks Two full weeks.

Speaker 1: 10:33

So, and we're saying weeks, but it's actually 10 work days because we do. Monday through Friday, seven to three, 30. Right Okay.

Speaker 3: 10:40

And you know there's always you got to take into fact, for you know, some sort of hiccups and things like that Right.

Speaker 1: 10:48

There's going to be a sub delay so the plumber or electrician can't get to the job right away, then that's going to delay it, so you never go. You may bid in your head and say this should take exactly seven days, but you're never going to bid a job for exactly seven days. No, it's correct. Not at all Right, cause you shoot yourself in the foot if you do that. You always want to overestimate the time.

Speaker 3: 11:13

Right, you know I mean you can't set yourself up for failure. Yeah, cause it's. You know, sometimes you get lucky and finished jobs in half the time, but you know 75% of the time is going to take every bit of the time.

Speaker 1: 11:29

You know and I read something. You know we're talking about increasing our prices and stuff. But if you look at, let's just say you bid it for two weeks we run into this too. If you bid it for two weeks, the client sometimes, if you finish in one, feels like they're most of the time they're happy. But some of them are like wait a minute. Right, I know you charged for two, but you finished in one, exactly Right, but that's a. That's a good scenario for us and and it should be a good scenario for them to have their space back.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Correct, but you do run into that, you know. But what people don't realize is we are efficient, we are quick and we, you know, are able to finish things on time or early because of all the training that goes on in the background, right? So we're not sending somebody in there that has to figure out how to do the job, we're sending people in there that know what they're doing Exactly. If we, if we actually take the job the full length of time, that means probably something has went wrong. You may not know about it as the client, but if it, if we bid for 10 days and they take 10 days, that's not the optimal.

Speaker 3: 12:44

No, that was not our goal.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I have to, you know, put it out there and make the clients understand that it could have easily. We got it done in five. It could have easily taken 10 with one simple delay as a sub couldn't get to it in the time. They said, or something you see what I mean. Yep, so there's, there's two sides to that. Plus, the client now has their home back a lot quicker because, being in kitchen and bath, you're taking away their kitchen or bath.

Speaker 3: 13:15

Right, and that's. That's a fairly big deal, yeah, in most cases, but where?

Speaker 1: 13:20

where did we so?

Speaker 3: 13:21

we started to trend up our pricing because of the way and the growth of our company, but we have to sell the fact that it's worth using a company that's more expensive, right, so we're a little more expensive, but you're getting better quality talent coming to your home because of the way we set up our training and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:41

And that's kind of the. The hope and the goal is that the quality pays for itself. Correct, right. And so now we do get a different level where people are hiring us knowing that we're not going to. There's going to be some sort of a mistake, not on every job, but we will take care of and make it right, right, and so we can make their vision come to life, because we offer more than just coming in, doing the work, getting out. We have designers, we've got a design team, we've got products and for us to invest in our people and Take time and do training to make them better, than we have got to pay for that exactly. And so People are starting to realize that a company like ours, who has insurance and workers come it, does cost more than an individual trade Contractor.

Speaker 3: 14:34

However, we bring more to the table, right and those guys, you know all their employees are 1099, so yeah you know they're not really. They're not having to pay any Part of the taxes right none of the insurance know anything.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Yeah, I mean, they're just and optimally for us to Keep employees and to keep people who want to work for Kirby, then we have to do these things Right. You know it's almost non-negotiable anymore, just the way the work world is. Now we're gonna move into the portion of the show where we talk interior design. We're gonna bring in an interior designer and we're gonna talk trending design and products. Hope you enjoy. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 15:19

All right, whitney, we're gonna jump right in. We've been blessed enough to Kirby interior design is going to do some interior design work with the US Sports Academy located in Daphne and we're also doing some remodeling and painting and Electrical just some different stuff over there. But we want to continually talk about process here, how we do things, and it may not be the same way for all interior design companies. But let's just for for the sake of the client and people who are watching this, who have interest in what we do and In the field that you're in, which is interior design, let's talk about how this is a commercial project. Yes, okay, and they called initially wanting to do some upgrades and remodel because they've really just Got back into the facility, or yeah, they've been mainly online.

Speaker 2: 16:15

It's kind of been like a ghost town in there and you know the building was built in them and it's 70s, it's a sports college, right?

Speaker 1: 16:22

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 16:23

So I believe like they focus on coaches and but then there's actual teams as well too very cool and they call it because they want to.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Obviously you said the 70s, so it's an old. It's an older building. They might have had some work done, but not to where it needs to be to look.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Yeah, it's really. I think all they've really done is like maintain yeah, it's, I mean it is so it's needed a ton of stuff.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Yeah and so okay, so they call here and Kind of walk us through how this whole thing escalated and got to where we are today, where we're in work and you're starting the design work. So talk to us about the initial steps to that. So they they called the office. Actually, I think she sent an email or whatever and then you went out.

Speaker 2: 17:09

We went out to the appointment and you know we visited the locker room. So we initially our main project was starting in the men's locker room, yeah, and it kind of just grew so there was the main part of the locker room. I mean, it has it crazy stuff like there's an old tanning room that we're converting into a bathroom, trying to make a tanning room in there.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Yeah, there's a time I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: 17:33

Yeah. So like we're turning that into like a toilet room and then we're making the other area like ADA compliant.

Speaker 1: 17:38

Gotcha yes.

Speaker 2: 17:39

But there's some locker, so we're gonna be refacing lockers, adding some lockers. We're doing total ripout of countertops. There's all kinds of tile. We tried to match some of the things that they currently had and that wasn't like. That Just wasn't possible. So right we explained.

Speaker 2: 17:57

You know, like this is kind of the path that we need to take. We really need to Consider the integrity of what's already here that we can use compared to adding new, so we're gonna do some there. The rooms are divided, so there's like a shower room and then there's the main locker room part. Yeah so what we're doing in the main locker room part is the lockers, all new Flooring, which we're gonna do the LVT flooring in there.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Okay quartz counters, new sinks, new fixtures, new light fixtures, painting the lockers to kind of match their so when you were looking at so it sounds like you're doing a lot of things and updating and. And on the remodel side, the remodlers. We take our cue from what you guys designed. So how did you convince the sports academy that we were the right fit? It's like what did that look? Did they interview? Did they just talk to you? Was there presentations? They did interview? Was there?

Speaker 2: 18:55

There was interviews, there was multiple site visits that we did. We wanted to try to be as budget friendly as possible because they have really been pretty non-existent in the actual real world of people being there. So this is the first year they've been open, so I think they were a little cautious at first. But getting to know them, lots of meetings, pulling all the samples, bringing it in I mean, I did a full presentation with an easel and kind of had everything printed out, showing them the vision, and a part of that was just.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Not only you do have to be mindful of the budget, but sometimes, when it's been so long to perform an update, you have to be real with them and I think what I can't speak for them, but part of what we presented was realistic.

Speaker 2: 19:48

It was.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Like you, can't just do the minimum and capture the effect that they wanted with the design and I think that's how we really won the bid essentially because they came in.

Speaker 2: 19:58

They wanted us to paint the tile floor and paint the tile walls. I mean we can't really warrant that. So it took a little bit of convincing like, listen, if you really want to put the money into this and you're really wanting it to be quality and you all have to stand out like you're this is your first year open again Like we need to make an impression. So, plus, we need good quality materials to make it last, because essentially they're not gonna want to spend any more money in the future to redo these things.

Speaker 1: 20:24

I mean when you do an upgrade of this caliber, you want it to last quite a while right and so what we have to do on the design side is we have to figure out not just what's currently trending, but we have to look at well, this is gonna last, this is gonna be a trend, this is gonna be something that sustains for multiple years, right, and so that comes from experience and knowing the market. So part of talking to them, I'm sure, was hey, this isn't something that's gonna go out of style next week.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Right. So we stuck like they have colors, so like the colors of the sports academy, the colleges, like navy, grays, whites. So we really stuck in that realm. It made it pretty easy with just different tones of it with pops, but then also bringing in the white, fresh, clean look, because it's very much right now like a little bit of a dungeon.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Gotcha, so you wanted to brighten it up, so you needed some light, bright colors Okay.

Speaker 2: 21:29

So the colors, like we're doing. There is one part of the block room in the shower room section that we are painting the back wall white just because that's not gonna get a lot of high traffic and water's not directly gonna hit onto it, whereas in the shower areas we're ripping that tile out, putting new in, adding like the navy blues, like the cool, like, and those colors aren't gonna go out of trend.

Speaker 1: 21:53

I mean, they're just classic colors and they go with the school color.

Speaker 2: 21:57

So it makes sense, so it makes sense.

Speaker 1: 21:59

Okay, and where we are? I have not done a site visit, so where are we now and what's our progress point with in your involvement with the design but the remodeler? So we've just done some painting and lighting updates.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Yeah, so currently. So originally the project was just the locker room and then a small kitchen area or just kind of Opened up, and they realized, okay. Yeah can't kind of just do this and that, like it has to.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Can't be. You know it right, you have to okay.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Yep, so we're men's locker room that goes out into a kitchenette area. That's a big hangout room for, like, the students, yeah, and then we're reading. Now it's the ping pong room, so we're we're painting in that and redoing on the lighting throughout the whole area. That we're doing. And then what we just finished Was the painting of the weight room, which has 20 foot ceilings.

Speaker 1: 22:48

So we painted it is. Did we also do lighting in there? We're doing the lighting so and you literally just left with our Electrician. And what was the lighting difference? Because you sent me some pictures so kind of what was he doing easy.

Speaker 2: 23:02

So there are two by two lights, I mean these housings. Everything was like built with the building, so it was kind of like a rebuild on the inside.

Speaker 2: 23:11

He had to do some rewiring and then he did some research and we found like these, because currently they're baluster lights, so we switched those out to these high-pro LED yeah lights and Like as different as night and day, because if you know anything about baluster lights, when you turn them on they have to warm up, so it has to like right, that's that old school like to come on, and then it pop, kind of you know the pop yes and when they go bad, they stink and like it's just not energy efficient at all. So I think they're gonna be really happy when they can just go flip a light on.

Speaker 1: 23:44

I mean, and you said me that picture, yeah, you sent me a picture where Andy had just done Replacement of one and then you had the next one and it was. It was night and day, yeah, and but it's more than just the actual look, the aesthetic, but, like you said, it's more energy efficient, right, and Originally, just looking at the housings, we, we were thinking that he was gonna have to replace the entire thing, yeah, but luckily he knows this stuff and he figured out a way to To kind of save that that time because they'll keep it within budget Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Amount of money that we were gonna buy these other fixtures is the same amount of money for so not only you know, looking at the design side, not only are we, you know, helping them to stay inside the budget, but we're actually giving them a better product.

Speaker 2: 24:34

Oh, absolutely. You know so much better and.

Speaker 1: 24:37

Thanks for joining us today. As always, we are grateful for our listeners and your continued support. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Follow us on social media via Facebook, instagram and TikTok. Get more info at our website, www dot. The home building show. Calm and, as always, remember who we are. The home building and remodeling show.