Read The Room

My brother bought his first home last year (you may remember my column about his kitchen remodel that garnered some very strong opinions). The backyard was a nondescript, weedy patch of ground, and he decided to put in a patio and do the labor himself. 

My brother has no construction experience, but he put on his game face and started to dig. And dig. And dig. The ground was hard, and the summer was hot. Months later, the project still wasn’t done and my brother was exhausted with the whole endeavor. Fall was coming, and once the cold weather hit he’d be unable to keep working outside. Still, he was determined to stay on the DIY course. 

Then one day, a neighbor dropped by and looked at the progress. The neighbor asked, in a voice full of concern, if the site was sloped away from the house. It was not. 

Feeling a bit embarrassed but not defeated, my brother called a landscape company and asked them if they could finish prepping the site. He just wanted a little help with that stage, and explained that his overall goal was still to finish the project himself, use flagstones, and get it all done before winter. 

The landscaper came to his place, and agreed to take on the tiny prep job. In doing so, they did three things incredibly well.

1) The sales rep read the room. He told my brother, more than once, how impressed he was by the amount of hard work that he had done on the project. My brother had no way of knowing that DIY fails are a common reason for people to call remodelers, yet rather than telling him that, the rep made him feel proud of what he had accomplished. 

2) The rep acted like a trusted advisor. The landscaper spent time explaining the elements of the project to my brother. He brainstormed ways of keeping costs down, and walked him through different installation considerations for flagstone vs. pavers. He correctly intuited that my brother would be alienated by a hard sell, and so put his energy into addressing the immediate need. 

3) He was not scared off by what appeared to be a small job. The landscape company was booked solid for the next two months and so couldn’t put my brother on the schedule to meet his “patio before winter” deadline. What the company did do was offer to shoehorn in his project between other things with the caveat that the work would take a little longer.

Many remodelers wouldn’t have touched that job. The scope of work is tiny and most companies have a backlog. But in this instance, taking on the project was a smart move. For starters, once my brother is no longer stuck spending every lunch hour and weekend digging, there’s a good chance that he’ll just hire them to complete the whole patio. Once that’s done, the rest of the yard will look even more bare. If my brother decides to put in a patio cover, outdoor kitchen, or fire area, who will he call? And who will he recommend to others? 

A little legwork up front will pay bigger dividends down the road.