Our Remodeling Process

First Contact and Your Onboarding Call

You call us, fill out a form on this site, or answer one of our ads, and within one business day you hear back with two things, our Project Intake Form and instructions for sending us photos. Once both are in, we schedule your onboarding call. It runs about twenty minutes for a small project and up to an hour and a half for a whole house. We go through your photos, walk through your answers, and get to the part that matters, what you are trying to accomplish, when you need it done, and how you plan to pay for it.

Project Intake Form and Photos

The intake form is our project questionnaire, and it takes most people about fifteen minutes. It asks what you want changed, why, what is driving the timing, how long you plan to stay in the home, and what you have in mind for a budget. Send photos along with it, wide shots of the room, the surrounding spaces, and the panel and water heater on a larger job. Photos are how we spot the things that move a number, a load bearing wall in the wrong place, a chimney chase, an old service panel, a slab that will need cutting. We read every answer before we speak with you, which is why the call goes better.

Fill out the Project Intake Form →

Your Bracket Estimate

Before you hang up on the onboarding call, we put a second call on the calendar, usually within three business days. In between, we price your project internally on our own cost spreadsheet, using the same line item cost codes we use on jobs we are building right now. On that second call we give you a bracket, a low number and a high number for the project as you described it. If the bracket is above what you had in mind, we start adjusting the scope until the project and the budget line up. Sometimes that means phasing the work, sometimes it means keeping the plumbing where it is, and sometimes it means telling you the project cannot be done for the money you have. You should learn that on a phone call, not after you have paid someone.

On-Site Visit and Project Development

If we are aligned on budget, we come out and see the house. We reserve the right to change the bracket after that visit in either direction, because we are pricing from photographs until we walk the space. Once you affirm the bracket, you can hire us to move into project development under a Design Agreement, which produces the documents your project cannot be built correctly without, as built drawings of your house as it exists today, proposed drawings of what we are building, a line item scope of work, and an allowance schedule carrying a dollar figure for every selection you have not made yet.

We charge for this because real pre-construction takes measured drawings, actual supplier pricing, and a scope written line by line. A contractor who gives that away for free is either the low bidder who discovers the real cost around framing, or the change order contractor whose number was low because his scope was vague. What you are buying here is not a set of drawings, it is the removal of the unknowns before they can cost you money. The drawings and scope are yours either way.

High Quality Trade Partners, Craftsmen and Materials

Our years of experience have allowed us to build the most talented, loyal and reliable group of craftspeople in the Birmingham, AL metro area. We are not material vendors or interior designers, but we know the best in town. Those long standing relationships are the reason your project does not sit waiting on a subcontractor who took a bigger job somewhere else.

Selections, Allowances and Ordering

When project development is finished, you approve the drawings, sign off on the final scope of work, and execute the Construction Agreement. From there we close out your selections and reconcile every allowance against what you actually chose. If your tile came in under allowance, that is your money and it comes back to you, and if your cabinets came in over, you know it now, in writing, instead of as a surprise invoice in month two. Then we order, because our goal is to have your materials bought and staged before the first day of demolition.

Transparent Construction Management

We led the effort as one of the first builders in the State of Alabama to utilize Buildertrend’s project management software. Every job we build runs through it and you get a login, so from your phone you can see the schedule, the daily logs, the photos from that day, every selection, every change order, and every invoice. Nothing about your project lives in a text message thread or in one person’s memory. There is one record, and you have it.

Project Construction

Once every detail is nailed down, Reliable puts boots on the ground and builds the project you approved, to the scope you approved, at the price you agreed to. We work through the phases, hold the schedule, and treat your house the way we would treat our own. At the end come final inspections, the punch list, your walkthrough, and your warranty documents, and then we get out of your house.