American Home Remodeling

When it’s time to spend money on upgrades to your home -- new windows, roofing, siding or renovations inside -- arguably the biggest decision to make is choosing who is right for the job. Here are a few tips to steer you in the right direction:

Choose a Local Business

Yes, it’s nice to help out business in your hometown or county. But let’s face it, finding a knowledgeable, reliable contractor that you can trust to make changes to your nest shouldn’t be based on doing the local economy a favor, right?

Well, think of it this way – the local guy is the one that drives past your house regularly. Hiring a company from out of the immediate area could be giving them the “out of sight, out of mind” feeling for your house, making it just another job for them.

A local contractor doesn’t want to have to avoid dissatisfied patrons while they’re grocery shopping or going for a walk. He wants you to tell your neighbors (and his neighbors) that he did a job that exceeded your expectations.

References

When it comes to project work like home renovations, it’s important to ask your potential contractor for references. A reputable contractor will be more than willing to provide you with many references for you to check out.

If the contractor has only a few, it's almost like admitting he only has a few satisfied customers, and what does that tell you? Of course, the references he has elected to give you will tell you exactly what you want to hear. In some cases, the one or two references could be just a friend, family member or even a bar buddy.

An established contractor will offer a list of projects they’ve done in the past and encourage you to call any name or number on the list.

Deposits and Supplies

As a general rule of thumb, contractors shouldn’t ask for more than 10 percent of the overall project cost as an initial deposit. If someone has to ask for 50 or even 30 percent down, it indicates that he is paying for supplies as the project progresses – not receiving them from a supplier on credit. A typical contract asks for the project balance upon completion.

Unfortunately, many “handyman” contractors get a large portion of project costs up front and then fail to complete the job. From there, it's up to the homeowner to find recourse against the individual.

Also, if a contractor has to buy his supplies as he goes, it is likely that he may be trying to save money by purchasing the cheapest supplies. Another method of skimping is to use just scraps of materials instead of using larger, seamless pieces.

But established, reputable contracting companies turn in their scrap materials for credit with their suppliers – meaning they always use the best pieces for your home.

Warranty

Warranties vary when it comes to what type of changes are being made to your home, but a good contractor will offer guarantees for his work in the form of some kind of warranty.

For example, American Home Remodeling in Batavia offers a lifetime warranty on parts and labor for new windows.

“Once we put a window in your home, we aren’t going to nickel and dime you. If something happens, we’ll come out and fix it for free because we handle top quality products,” said owner Tim Stoddard.

Quality contractors are knowledgeable about manufacturers' warranties as well, and will consider the best value for each customer -- such as siding that is guaranteed not to fade or change color.

American Home Remodeling also touts lifetime warranties on roofing shingles through their manufacturer and they also offer a 15-year installation guarantee "no questions asked."

“If our customers have any issues with their roof in the next 15 years, we’ll come back and fix it no charge,” Stoddard said.

You really do get what you pay for

Although it’s important to find ways to cut costs in a difficult economy, everyone knows the saw "you get what you pay for."

It is possible to find a happy medium. With a solid, trustworthy contractor, an open line of communication can make the budget a priority without having to make unreasonable sacrifices with regard to quality, timeliness of the project, and/or supplies used to upgrade your home.

After 15 years of working for other people in the home-improvement business -- both as a hired hand and in sales -- Tim Stoddard began to get the itch to do it himself.

"My wife Lisa was a big instigator of it," Stoddard said. "She kept telling me I could do it.”

So he enrolled in free classes from the Small Business Administration at Geneseo College and began planning what would become American Home Remodeling.

Ten years ago, Tim and Lisa launched their company with a vision for a firm that would be known for its quality and its personal attention to customer care.

"We didn't need to be a big fish," Stoddard said. "We didn't need to be the biggest company out there. We wanted to be a company known for honesty, doing the right thing and having the right people in place."

In part, that's how the name of the company came to be. American Home Remodeling sounded to Tim like a name that would stand for quality. It also helped that the company name would begin with "A" so it would be at the top of Yellow Page listings.

The company name also led to one of American Home Remodeling's signature marketing features -- its fleet of trucks painted in patriotic red, white and blue.

Lisa's cousin paints murals professionally and one day Tim asked her, "Can you make my truck look like it ran through an American flag?" She said she would give it a try.

The company now has four flag-painted trucks, each one a little different, he said.

"I went to the bank to make a deposit one day and a lady came up to me and said, 'Are you the fellow with the flag truck?'" Stoddard recalled. He said he was. "She said, 'I looked at the truck and I looked away and then I looked at it again and I thought, it's not offensive at all.'"

Stoddard said that's when he knew the trucks were helping project an image of a reputable, local company.

American Home Remodeling's bread-and-butter business, according to Stoddard, is roofing and siding, but he's also proud of his carpentry department, which allows him to take interior and exterior building jobs.

The siding business isn't about taking any job and putting the least expensive siding on a house, in keeping with Stoddard's goal of being a reputable mid-size business.

Stoddard said his company uses top-of-the-line materials and tries to maintain the character of the house. For example, the slats of the siding will match the width of the original wood clapboards, and if the house had gingerbread shingles, that decorative feature will be retained.

"I don’t do many rental homes because we’re too high for rentals," Stoddard said. "They want to go with the cheapest product they can in most cases. We don’t really want to have jobs out there with our name on it that look like that."

The Stoddards clearly have a love for Batavia's older homes. They live in -- and are restoring -- one of the Homelius-designed houses on Ellicott Avenue -- and in 2004 they purchased the Doty Mansion at the corner of Jackson Street and Highland Park.

In 2006, they completed the major indoor renovation of four apartments inside what was once one of Batavia's grandest residences (maybe only the long-ago destroyed Richmond Mansion could beat it).

The Stoddard's bought the mansion with only $5,000 down, with the previous owner carrying the mortgage and a bank financing more than $50,000 in restoration work.

"Once we went into the Doty Mansion, it was just a mess," Stoddard said. "It was just HUD. There was no heat into two of the apartments for two years. They had space heaters. There was raw sewage coming from the upper apartment to the lower one.

"We started demo’ing and you could see past all the dirt and debris that it was really a nice house at one time," Stoddard added.

At first, buying the Doty Mansion was just an investment. For the price, the Stoddard's figured they could fix it up and rent out the apartments to reliable tenants and turn a profit, but the restoration work had unexpected benefits for American Home Remodeling.

Through the work, the Stoddards tapped into a regional network of specialists in woodworking, masonry, stained glass and other specialties.

"Now, I’m not really too unsure of myself or afraid to try stuff," Stoddard said. "There’s so many people out there whom I now know who can do special things. It was kind of a blindfolded thing. I didn’t realize how beneficial it would be by working on that mansion."

There isn't enough restoration work in Batavia, Stoddard said, to make that a focus of American Home Remodeling, but he thinks that if more people knew the option was there -- even though it can be expensive work -- they might take that approach with their older homes.

"Somebody might have molding that is really ornate plaster, but bits and pieces are broken," Stoddard said. "If they knew we could come in and save that and restore it, then I think they would entertain that idea. I think a lot of people don’t realize it can be restored and fixed so they turn around and get rid of it."

But whether through renovations, siding or roofing, American Home Remodeling has been growing, Stoddard said. He projects this year the company will gross $1 million for the first time.

During peak building season, Stoddard said he employs as many as 18 people, and that's as big as he wants to get.

"We had 22 one summer, our fourth year in business, and I was just pulling my hair out. It got to be a little too much to deal with," Stoddard said.

Photo: Tim Stoddard, right, talking with the owner of a home his company re-sided for the previous owner.