Kuhns Contracting, Inc. Receives Consumer Excellence” (ACE) Award

Presented by NARI

COLUMBUS(November 10, 2011) –  Kuhns Contracting, Inc. has been recognized as a recipient of the 2011 NARI ACE Award. The ACE Award is presented by the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) of Central Ohio. The ACE (Achievement in Consumer Excellence) Award, a consumer rated awards program honors NARI members that provide exemplary products and/or service. The award recognizes professionals in the remodeling industry and vendors that receive an high overall rating on four criteria as judged by consumers who have actually used their products and/or services. Unlike some other rating services, consumers do not pay a subscription fee to submit a rating or receive a referral.

“The NARI ACE Award provides consumers a valuable tool to help them begin and complete successful remodeling projects, and that tool is the knowledge that they are selecting a professional remodeling contractor or product supplier that they can count on to do the quality work they desire. This consumer rated program provides additional assurance that consumers can count on quality, professional services. The program also provides a no cost mechanism for consumers to provide feedback on work performed for them by NARI members. Our goal is to expand our membership base to encompass all industry partners that share our professional values and code of ethics,” states Shari Bates, Executive Director of NARI of Central Ohio.

 Consumers have rated all ACE Award recipients on four criteria:  1. Quality of Work  2.  Professionalism  3.  Reliability and  4.  Timeliness.  In order to receive the NARI ACE Award, the company must be a member of NARI and must receive an average grade of 3.5 or better based on the alphabetic scores submitted by consumers. 

Kuhns Contracting, Inc. is proud to have received this recognition. “Our customers’ mean everything to us, therefore receiving this award for the last several years brings great satisfactions.”

The NARI ACE Awards will be presented during the NARI annual Awards Gala which will be  held onFriday, December 2nd, 2011 at Pinnacle Golf Club inGrove City.

For additional information on the NARI ACE Awards program visit www.trustnari.org.

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Image Gallery

For those of you who are interested in browsing our recent work, please enjoy the following gallery of images.  Photo’s are nice to view but please note that you are only viewing the results of our work.  The story of Kuhns Contracting has just as much to do with how we achieve the results and our continued relationships with our great customers! Give us a call!

kitchen-remodel

13 Photos

bathroom-renovation

27 Photos

new-windows

6 Photos

basement-finishing

5 Photos

room-addition

4 Photos

bedroom-remodel

4 Photos

new-roof

5 Photos

living-room-remodel

4 Photos

custom-cabinetry

5 Photos

exterior

10 Photos

7. Solving Problems

The larger the remodel, the greater the chances for frustrations. There will be equipment breakdowns, supply shortages, miscommunications, and delays. Draw up a few friendly rules for workers. Tell them where they may park their trucks and store their equipment. Plan for ways you can indulge yourself when times become especially stressful. Schedule a day at a spa and reserve a night at a romantic bed and breakfast inn. You deserve it!

Kuhns Contracting, Inc. of Central Ohio will walk you through these steps in order to help you build your dream with great memories and encouragement to keep dreaming!

In most recent times, homeowners are investing a lot of money into searching for ways to improve their bathrooms and create a more comfortable, functional feel. After all, the craziness surrounding our every day lives makes the time in the bathroom some of your only personal time. It seems reasonable to want your bathroom to be soothing, rejuvenating, and practical. Bathroom remodeling is a wonderful way to add value to your home and pleasure to your hectic life. With so many aspects to consider, such as cabinets, faucets and fixtures, flooring, toilets, vanities, showers and bath tubs, bathroom remodeling can often be very overwhelming. Kuhns Contracting of Central Ohio will help you start with the basics, the actual layout and floor plan of your new bathroom.

Bathroom Design

The design of your new bathroom is where you should start your planning. Sometimes it is a great idea to hire a bathroom designer to help you optimize your limited space. The bathroom designs shown on TV and in magazines may work well for someone else’s set up, but only those who see your bathroom up close and in personal can create an effective design. If you do plan to design your bathroom yourself, make sure to think about the amount of time you spend in your bathroom each day and use this as a way to rate what needs to be upgraded the most. For example, the more time you spend, the more space you need. To add to your comfort, consider knocking down a wall and creating more room. Keep in mind that an estimated 80-85% of what you put into your bathroom remodeling, you get back when you sell. In addition to more space, think about installing fog free mirrors, heated floors, or a beautiful whirlpool.

Once you have successfully decided on your new bathroom design, the challenging decisions arise. It is now time to start selecting color schemes, vanities, cabinets, counters, single or double bathroom sinks, bath tubs and every other element that helps set the tone of your bathroom. The bathroom tile may be one of your most difficult decisions solely due to the vast amount of styles, colors, and sizes to choose from. Larger tiles are becoming more and more popular; however, they require the underlayment to be very level. Mosaic tiles, one inch tiles, are another break through in bathroom designs. Mosaics come in countless colors and allow you to create your own custom floor design.

Bathtubs and Showers

Choosing a new bath tub is one of the more exciting remodeling decisions. This is your chance to get rid of that old, uncomfortable rectangle tub and upgrade to something rejuvenating, something massaging, something more like a whirlpool tub or a soft bathtub. Maybe you simply wish to improvement the look and feel of your old tub by covering it with a new shell. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to pamper yourself, but be smart about where you pamper yourself. Sometimes it is a better idea to upgrade your shower, something you use two-three times a day, as opposed to investing money into a tub that might just sit there unused. Showers are becoming more and more attractive with new technology. Your shower can be turned into a steam room, stimulate hydro massages, and for your convenience they now come in multiple shower heads.

Bathroom Fixtures

The next step is to select a new bathroom sink, faucet, and vanity. A lot of creativity can go into these three essential bathroom elements. Above counter sinks seem to be the new trend for bathrooms. They perform a practical function and can be viewed as art at the same time. Above or beneath, you still need to select the material/s that your sink will be made of. Generally, sinks can be made from stone, marble, glass, copper, and stainless steel. Special custom sinks are also available. The material you choose will depend much on the overall appearance you are looking for. The same holds true for the vanity you select. Your bathroom scheme will be revealed through the material your vanity is made of. Are you looking for a modern or contemporary bathroom? Faucets, on the other hand, function differently depending on what material they are made from. If you are looking for along lasting faucet, stick with materials such as brass and copper. But make sure to select faucets that compliment your sink and vanity.

Kuhns Contracting of Central Ohio desires to partner with you in your next bathroom remodel project.  So whether you are simply considering the pro’s and con’s or are determined to get your project done, give us a call!

There is a category of home renovations which I call “Nice to Have, But Not Overly Exciting.” Replacing your roof falls into this category – though I admit, it’s much more than “Nice to Have.” It’s more like “Essential to Have” and Kuhns Contracting of Central Ohio will protect your home with the right balance of functionality and attractiveness to bring real value to your home.

Replace Your Roof Before Doing Anything Else

Within the home renovation workflow, roof replacement is job number one. Every single home remodeling task you undertake, from drywall installation on down to the most delicate swath of paint, will be ruined if you do not protect it properly with a roof – first.

Roofing Materials

Your choice of roofing materials often depends on your locality, as much as on your own personal taste.

• Asphalt Composition Shingles: Cheap and easily obtainable, but less attractive than other options due to “flat” appearance.
• Wood Shake: a pricey, but attractive shingle.
• Metal Roofing: Metal roofing is still rare, and few roofers know how to install it; special companies are required for this job.
• Slate Roofing: highly attractive, and a high-end roofing option; extremely slippery to walk on.
• Rubber Slate or “Faux” Slate – Recycled post-industrial synthetics gaining in popularity.

Replacement Cost

The cost to replace a roof, as you might imagine, varies. It varies according to your roofing materials (all the way from cheap 3-tab asphalt shingles up to architectural shingles or even slate), the roofing contractor, the pitch (or steepness) of your roof, the area to be covered, and a host of other factors.

Generally, you’re looking at costs of $5,000 or more. It is hard to imagine a whole-house roof replacement to cost less. Roofing contractors have a great deal of flexibility to negotiate on the cost, so you please feel that you have license to do so.

There are a few words you will need to know.

• A “square“ is a unit of measure equalling 100 square feet.
• A “vent” runs along the ridge of the roof to expel trapped vapor and heat, so that the roofing does not buckle and deteriorate over time.
• “Composition” is what is commonly referred to as asphalt shingles.

Replacement Timing

No. Roofers are amazing – and this is why we pay them to do our roofs. I have seen roofers here in my very wet state – Washington State – expertly shoehorn in a roofing job between rains. No, the weather conditions do not have to be perfectly dry.

However, any partially installed areas must be perfectly dry before any covering layers are installed. The trick behind “expertly shoehorning” in the roofing project is to have a large team of professional roofers who can knock out work phases in hours, instead of days. Yet another reason to perhaps think twice before doing your own roofing job.

The Roofing Process

Remarkably, a moderately-sized, professionally-installed roofing job might take only 3 or 4 days.

• Remove all existing shingles, deposit them in a roll-off, and remove.
• Make minor repairs on roof if in good condition. If not, replace bad wood with plywood or 1″x6″ boards, whichever is applicable to your roof.
• Install ice dam protection, a barrier of synthetic materials to prevent backed up ice in the gutters which prevents ice-melt from draining away. The ice-melt will permeate under the shingles and cause damage to the inside of your house.
• Lay down asphalt paper.
• Apply the shingles – starting at the eaves and working upward.
• Apply flashing around all areas where leaks might come into the house – against the chimney, stack vents, etc.
• Install the ridge vent.

Room Additions

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In fact, they are much like people. Room additions can be plain and simple or exceptionally extravagant. I have built small room additions – less than 80 square feet and I have built ones that came close to 2,400 square feet. I’m sure you have seen a variety of room additions yourself. They are as different as snowflakes.

A Huge Undertaking

Constructing a room addition is really the same thing as building a small house. The only problem is that it is much harder. The connection details are tough. Working around people and finished surfaces requires extra care. Dust and utility (electric – plumbing) interruptions must be kept to a minimum. There are many things you have to consider with room additions that never are an issue when you build a new home from scratch. Basically, room additions are a pain in the you-know-what.

The Right Height

One of the most crucial aspects of room additions is making sure the floors meet. I can’t tell you how many room additions I have visited where the floors do not line up. There is a hump or a dip. The mistake can usually be traced to a failure of not calculating the foundation height from the point where the “break-through” or “connection” will be. All too often, the contractor will calculate the floor height at a corner or some other obscure point.

The trick is to cut a hole through the side of the existing house exactly where the archway or doorway will be that connects the two rooms. Cut a hole and remove all the exterior wall materials until you can actually see the subfloor or finished floor material inside the house. From here you can then calculate where your top of foundation will be. I always draw a picture and back calculate down to the top of the new foundation.

For example, I determine the thickness of my new finished flooring, the thickness of the subflooring, the floor joist height, the treated lumber foundation sill thickness, and the 1/8 inch for the foam sill sealer! It all adds up.

Wall Heights & Roofs

Do you want the roof line, overhang, gutter board, soffits etc. to match perfectly on the outside? It takes some work for this to happen. For these elements to match, you need to take apart the exterior of upper wall treatments to “see” where the actual finished wall ends and the bottom of the rafters begin.

To make a roof line up you must determine the existing roof pitch, the heel height of the rafters as they pass over the outer edge of the rough building line frame, and the rough overhang depth. It is important to keep in mind the exterior wall treatment of the room addition. If you are not going to match the addition to the existing house, then you must treat the exterior finished walls as the same material. Confused yet? See, I told you building room additions was not for the faint hearted!

Ventilation

A large majority of room additions have crawl spaces. To eliminate moisture problems and dampness, you need to cover the soil in the crawl space with a high performance vapor barrier. I have discussed these in a past column and Builder Bulletin. The clear 6 mil poly you were thinking of using is not high performance! Visit my website for this information.

Heating and Cooling

Are you thinking of simply extending your heating and cooling system into the room addition? Think again! If your original furnace and air conditioner were sized accurately for the original house, I doubt they will provide enough “conditioned” air for the new addition. If you are adding several hundred feet of new floor area, you can count on a significant upgrade of your heating and cooling system. You don’t believe me? Then make sure the heating and air conditioning person does a new heat gain and heat loss calculation!

Room additions are a lot of work. Don’t underestimate the complexity of this job! That why you need to contact us at Kuhns Contracting.

At Kuhns Contracting, Inc. we understand that even small home repairs can feel like big headaches.  Let us help make your to-do-list a thing of the past.  Whether it is replacing weather stripping, installing ceiling fans, repairing rotted wood, painting, glass and screen door repair or replacing floors…no project is too small.

Our Mission:  “To be the only contractor our customers’ will ever need by establishing a reputation of excellence in quality and professional workmanship.”