Overcoming Renovation Surprises
Renovating a home should be exciting. You’re embracing the possibilities of a new lifestyle designed to your specifications. Renovating can also be a daunting task, filled with unexpected surprises and challenges. How do you find a contractor you can trust? How do you overcome inevitable challenges along the way?
With historical homes in particular, we all know that you never know what you’re going to find behind those walls and what other challenges will come up along the way.
I recently sat down with Aspire Design and Home to discuss a particularly challenging project with a triumphant ending.
Katheryn Scott, an Interior Designer and owner of a Brooklyn Brownstone came to M. Daddio after a few other contractors created more issues than solutions. Our team dug in and didn’t quit until every detail was perfect and it was a show piece of a home. Read the full article and read more coverage of the property
By the time Mike Daddio arrived on the scene, Scott had worked with a series of project managers and contractors. Of one, she recalls, “After COVID, he just told me, ‘I can’t promise you when I can come back.'” Scott was stranded. “That’s when I hired Mike Daddio,” she says.
“Calling it a punch list really doesn’t do it justice,” says Daddio of the tasks awaiting his team from M. Daddio Builders. “But essentially, it was a ginormous, complicated punch list of items that we had to come in and address.” These included both installations and repairs, including gas, plumbing and electrical work behind walls badly in need of patching. “A previous contractor had abandoned her, and, unfortunately, vendors she’d had great relationships with were just no longer reliable.”
“It’s not uncommon for us to be asked to tackle challenging situations,” Daddio explains. Nevertheless, achieving results that would satisfy a designer’s discerning eye took flexibility. “We had a huge amount of trust from Kathryn,” explains Daddo. “We had open book time and material engagements,” he says, “because we didn’t know what the full scope was going to be. When we tackled what sometimes looked like, on the surface, it might be a simple thing—that can become very complex,”
For Scott, Daddio’s role in the project continues to be heroic. “He completed everything for me. And he still is there if things go wrong or need repair,” she says. “He actually rescued me from people who—their mindset was really not so much to do the right job, but just to get through it.”
Daddio says that he and his team couldn’t have been happier with what they have achieved. “It’s very cathartic to go through. Every project has an emotional spectrum,” he says. “At the end of the project, it’s like playing a major chord after playing a minor chord—that feeling of relief.”
