Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Remodeling Professionals MUST Be Resourceful!

Remodeling is very much like performing surgery on a house.  You can’t just tear into it and hope for the best.  Often times you’re trying to match materials that may or may not be available.  Sometimes you have to get creative to tie the elements together.  Sometimes you just get lucky.  Either way, as a Remodeling Professional, you have to be resourceful and you have to put forth the effort to find the matching components whenever necessary.  This resourcefulness doesn’t take decades to develop, but it does take effort. 
 



As you can see in the photo above, the family dog took issue with this beautiful wood casement window.  We could replace the entire unit (very expensive) or attempt to repair the existing window (with no guarantee we could find the matching trim).  So we set out to find the matching trim in order to make the necessary repairs.



Photos of the existing trim were e-mailed to our various suppliers.  None were positive they had a match, so the next step was to visit a few showrooms.  An older window sample in a Kolbe showroom yielded a match.  However, they no longer made that profile.  Luckily there is a Kolbe warehouse in Dallas which gave us some hope.  In the back, hidden behind the newer style trim, was the match we were looking for!  Comparing it to the new 1x4 wood (bottom right photo), you can really see the old trim had been sitting (yellowed) for quite some time.





 
Just Like New Without The Added Expense!