We dive into bathroom remodeling in this episode. We sat down with California Contractor and Designer Matt Plaskoff from One Week Bath. He also owns Plaskoff Construction. Plaskoff Construction serves the most discriminating homeowners in the Greater Los Angeles Area, providing Design and Build services and improving the homes of such notables as Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Candy, John Lithgow, Samuel Jackson, Ben Affleck, Carl Lewis, Henry Fonda, Goldie Hawn and many others.

In this episode we use this experiance and what he learned from managing construciton projects from ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition to remodel your bathroom with quality and on schedule. To find out more checkout https://oneweekbath.com/

To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.

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[00:00:19] Matt Plaskoff: each one, I just retired a 35 year guy that was 35 years. So look, I can feel comfortable that no matter whose home they go into, one of our core values in our company is treat your home, like it's your mom's treat It's your mom.

[00:00:49] Intro: forever, but you never know who they're going to send. They go up and down, something happens.

[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: to the around the house show. Thanks for tuning in last week. We've talked a little bit about designing kitchens and stuff, and this week, why not jump into bathrooms?

[00:01:23] Matt Plaskoff: Thank you so much, Eric. Good to join you.

[00:01:40] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, I've been, just like you, I've been 35 plus years in the business, started in the custom home building world, and then was looking for a better way and developed this bath business about 22 years ago or so, so, uh, 4, 500 plus bathrooms later. Here we are,

[00:02:09] Eric Goranson: Cause I tell you what, that's how everybody gets back at contractors in this day and age. But. You have done a solid job, I can tell, just online of keeping people happy and managing projects. I can't find anybody out there that's done it better when you jump online.

[00:02:31] Matt Plaskoff: Occasionally something comes up that, and I think the, the look, the key to it is just making sure that you resolve issues and that you don't, I've never walked away from anything. We don't walk away from anything. Our team is amazing. I don't, I'd love to take credit, but we have an amazing aftercare team.

[00:03:11] Eric Goranson: Exactly. And sounds like you've just done a great job of. Creating that culture. And that's really where that success goes, because if you can keep all of those people out there heading in the right direction, which is on that consumer, that's hired you to do the project, or even look into a project. If you can keep everybody going the same direction, that's on you, brother.

[00:03:33] Matt Plaskoff: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Consumers, they're scared. Let's face it. Most of them are scared to death. So you, you have, that's our approach. That's how we approach it is we know they're fearful. We know they're scared. How do we give them peace? That's the approach, right?

[00:03:53] Eric Goranson: It looks like you guys have a pretty solid system of getting things going before the job starts, because. [00:04:00] That's really where projects start to come off the rails is when those materials don't show up or that planning went sideways.

[00:04:16] Matt Plaskoff: We couldn't 1st of all, we couldn't have our own people because you can't keep 50 roofers on staff and 50 carpenters on staff and you had to sub things out. And as I started to get a little long in the tooth, I was like, man, there's got to be a better way here. So the design build thing where we are.

[00:04:51] Matt Plaskoff: We're not going to tear your house apart until we have everything. We need to put it back together. And then once we show up, we're going to make a commitment to be there every single day [00:05:00] without any gaps. Which is super rare. And you know how hard it is to try to maintain a schedule like that, but it's the only way to, you got to be accountable for the whole project from start to finish.

[00:05:13] Eric Goranson: if you are just joining us, we're talking to the Matt Plaskoff from one week bath. Now let's get back to the conversation. Yeah, no question. And materials is interesting. We learned that boy through 2019, with, with COVID and the materials just. Where's my tile? It's on a container ship out in the Bay and it's been there for six weeks.

[00:05:45] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, that was a big deal. And we had, as we all had to chuck and jive with that because we had to keep our people.

[00:06:11] Matt Plaskoff: They just want to get started. And so for us, we had to be very. What's the word? Committed and diligent about not doing that because of that. Even today, some of the lead times are longer than what we would hope and expect. But our model is don't tear Eric's house apart until you have every stitch of everything you need to put it back together.

[00:06:41] Eric Goranson: Yeah, I had a container coming from a cabinet company in the east coast. It was in town. It's like, all right, I know where it is. It'll be at my warehouse next week. We're starting to plan this start.

[00:07:11] Eric Goranson: But if you haven't started it, at least you don't have eight weeks of nobody sitting there in that bathroom, not getting anything done as you're waiting to get everything else.

[00:07:33] Matt Plaskoff: Nothing's damaged ready to go at least 2 weeks before the job starts. And that gives us like enough room to breathe, where if God forbid that happens, look, homeowners will understand if you're like this happened, but they're not going to understand if they're like, without a space for ever. Why did you start?

[00:08:09] Matt Plaskoff: We know what can go wrong. And if you want to go with Joey, then have fun. But this is not, that's not the right. It's not the right approach. So

[00:08:29] Eric Goranson: He's just wanting to get in there and swing a hammer. So we can get that first check coming and then there's going to be weeks without work being done.

[00:08:45] Matt Plaskoff: Or do you want to get started right away because it's exciting and then you're torn up for 10 weeks plus, however long it takes them to do it. And most people are logical and they say, yeah, I get it. The industry is the [00:09:00] industry and what we're doing is so unique. What they hear from most contractors is, yeah, don't worry.

[00:09:08] Eric Goranson: Yeah, no, it's tough. And all of a sudden they're like, yeah, the towel guy will be out here in what two or three weeks, but we got the electrical rough in down in the plumbing rough end. So yeah, Jimmy will be back out here in three weeks when he gets cleared up with his schedule.

[00:09:42] Eric Goranson: And that can be a struggle for anybody, but it sounds like you guys really have that dialed in with this design build approach.

[00:10:03] Matt Plaskoff: I just retired a 35 year guy that was with me 35 years. So. Look, I can feel comfortable that no matter whose home they go into, one of our core values in our company is treat your home like it's your mom's, treat the home like it's your mom's. And so I can feel comfortable that they're going to care for the place, but having, being able to have the control, that's the thing, because with subs, look, I had great subs when I was building homes and guys in teams that I used forever, but you never know who they're going to send.

[00:10:50] Matt Plaskoff: 30. It's like a whole different ball game, but with that, to go back to what we were talking about, you've got to have the stuff there because otherwise you got [00:11:00] guys standing on shovels and that's painful from a financial perspective. So those 2 puzzle pieces, they lock in. So you've got the stuff, you've got the guys, you can trust them.

[00:11:21] Eric Goranson: part is the finger pointing, right? That's the worst part is that with the subs going, no, it was them. It was them. It was them. And you've got four businesses now and their representatives out there trying to figure out what's going on.

[00:11:38] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, for sure. I think that just having our owners, our homeowners are just like, they love the fact that they can just call one place and that's what it is. So yeah, it's great. It's a great. That's a

[00:12:04] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah. Especially when you're getting permits and things because here you need a permit to change a faucet. And so, but it's really not a tough thing. If. Truth be told, we do 7 and 8 day projects too, if someone says, hey, like a basic bath, right? We can do in 5 days. No problem. There's only 1 inspection.

[00:12:50] Matt Plaskoff: And the other thing is we pay our customers for every day we're late. So we put our money where our mouth is. If we don't meet our, when we're not working multi family projects, because [00:13:00] those condos things are a whole nother story, but. Well, we're doing a single family residence, and we've made a commitment to finish on a particular time.

[00:13:27] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah. But, and trust me, when we first started, like we didn't, I had run extreme makeover home edition for two years. I ran that TV show for ABC and we were building houses in a week, but we had a hundred guys, I worked on some up

[00:13:45] Matt Plaskoff: I was up there on that Seattle build, Alan Luxmore and I were up there and so we took it all over the country, but I had the one week back idea before the show even existed.

[00:14:15] Matt Plaskoff: Some of those master bathrooms would take me three months. I'm getting them done four or five times faster, just because we have everything and we're making a commitment to be there and we have the experience.

[00:14:35] Eric Goranson: Is, uh, Turn the cameras on and get the TV crews installed in there because what takes, what takes an hour now takes two. And the

[00:14:54] Eric Goranson: war side, just rain and weather and all the stuff that gets thrown out of jobsite, especially on a short [00:15:00] time when you've got a handful of days to get a house done and you get a rainstorm pop in it.

[00:15:08] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, that's Seattle. So it rained and it was. It was rough, but yeah, yeah, I

[00:15:17] Matt Plaskoff: that's funny. I'm sure we ran into each other over 20 years ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. About 20. So, yeah,

[00:15:36] Eric Goranson: Sometimes you'll call the inspection in the afternoon and maybe you've got a shower pan inspection up here that you have to do and you're hoping they show up in the morning, but sometimes they don't show up until the afternoon, which can absolutely kill the construction schedule. But I love your model because Everybody can be working on everything else around there and get jumping back on that once they get to that, where if you're a contractor with, with [00:16:00] subs, can't really do it that easily.

[00:16:22] Matt Plaskoff: So it's a cold system. We get it done. And then, and if you know what, if the inspector doesn't show up, we can still tile the floor. We can still install the cabinet. We can still paint the walls. We can do everything but tile. The wet space. And so it becomes more fluid in that way. And that's that when people say, I've lost jobs because contractors told homeowners, there's no way they can get it done.

[00:17:05] Matt Plaskoff: The homeowners, I understand. And we're like, yeah, but we, our schedule looks like Tetris. So that way, but yeah. So

[00:17:29] Eric Goranson: It's not going to get done that quickly because of their system and not calling them a liar, but you're right. They're not calling in the guy to be doing the other stuff. They had somebody scheduled on that job and their other subs not in the building. They're on another job. And you're right. You're not going to get that done in that situation because you don't have that flexibility and the ability.

[00:17:59] Matt Plaskoff: it's not [00:18:00] deceptive. They're like, Hey, this is, we can't control it. And, and this is what it is. But, and the other part of that is that the minute you have a delay like that, because you've got these subs all lined up, all of a sudden the towel guys, if I can't start on Thursday, I can't see you for three weeks and then it becomes even worse, but that, but you and I both know, like.

[00:18:50] Matt Plaskoff: If you want to do it like that, then it is what it is. You

[00:19:13] Eric Goranson: Look at electronics. Look at everything else in the home that is upgraded I mean Yeah, Hot Mopin worked, did its thing, but sorry, Sluder System to me is a better system. And a lot of the other systems are better, they're just, technology's better. Dude, pagers worked. Pagers

[00:19:36] Matt Plaskoff: That stuff worked. But it's why I get it, I get it. And you and I both know that this whole craftsmanship thing, the mentorship programs, thank goodness. I think some of the craftsmanship mentor programs are coming back because that was lost. People didn't, but anyway, it's yeah, you're, that's funny. I'm totally with you on that.

[00:20:15] Eric Goranson: And it's just that kind of stuff that

[00:20:20] Eric Goranson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Funny. I learned a lot about how Southern California construction. It's funny. In different parts of the country, there are so many different trends. Like hot mopping is really a Southern California thing for showers.

[00:20:59] Eric Goranson: [00:21:00] And most of them down there are good, but it's just shocking to see like in any area, how bad contracting gets when. The consumer finds the wrong person, and that's the dangerous side of any of these projects. And what I think many homeowners are really fearful of is, okay, I'm going into business with here.

[00:21:37] Matt Plaskoff: It's a little bit about money, right? Because when you have those guys, you're talking about competing, you're competing against them and the homeowner doesn't know. And I can't tell you how many people I say I talked to. And I say, you know what? Send me the proposal. Let me look at the proposal. I will tear it apart because most of these guys aren't including [00:22:00] everything.

[00:22:23] Matt Plaskoff: It's interesting. Cause well, California is very difficult place to work. Uh, and it's very consumer centric, which is good. They just put a new clause in the home improvement contracts. That required that the contractor give the homeowner their insurance agent's phone number, because there were so many.

[00:23:04] Matt Plaskoff: And so like you try to protect against everything, but there's always going to be a situation where it's a great deal. And a homeowner is willing to take the risk and liability, and you can't compete with that. You just, and you don't.

[00:23:30] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah. What are you doing exactly? What kind of tile? What are you

[00:23:36] Matt Plaskoff: Is it marble? Is it porcelain? Are they big tiles? Is it mosaic? Is it glass? Is it? That's what I go through. Right? So. Yeah. Are

[00:23:50] Matt Plaskoff: It's funny because yeah, 4 by 4, if you look at the cost value study that remodeling magazine does every year, right? They have these, [00:24:00] I love it too. They have these average price points across the nation or whatever. We're on the same coast, so we get the same numbers. But it's so funny because the definition of the bathroom that is being the definition of what the bathroom will be is what we're tearing out.

[00:24:19] Eric Goranson: like, are you kidding me? There's not even a cabinet in this that you guys have on your list of things. Those details are the key, right? Yeah.

[00:24:36] Matt Plaskoff: They don't have the design piece. They're, they expect the homeowner to go out and. Buy all this stuff and they don't know what they're looking at. They don't know quality product. They don't know good price. They don't know anything. And so that's, it is rare on a smaller project, like a bathroom, for example, like when we're doing big projects, right.

[00:25:22] Matt Plaskoff: So they just put allowances that are unrealistic. They just, they, or they say, here's the labor number. You got to buy all the stuff. And that's where it becomes really hard for a homeowner because they can't compare. There's no way to compare.

[00:25:43] Eric Goranson: Really? Because Are they putting in a 199 store brand toilet? Are they putting in a, on the extreme, the 26, 000 robotic Toto? You know what I mean? It's just two extremes right there, but it's a great example. Everything, there's such big [00:26:00] swings on every product in the bathroom from That piece of tile to the shower.

[00:26:26] Matt Plaskoff: Or so when they say, yeah, whatever you can buy, whatever you want, then all of a sudden the homeowner comes with this glass mosaic for the shower and the guys that's going to take me like three extra days. Here's your change order. And then that's what happens. And it's not the homeowner's fault. They don't know.

[00:27:12] Matt Plaskoff: Because then it's real, then it's a real number. It's not some pie in the sky guests, but again, it's all driven by, this is how we've always done it. And yeah, that's a rock.

[00:27:35] Eric Goranson: Perfect. You know what that is, right? So. Now, you know what that is and whether or not you're adding that to just adding that heated tile floor can be a big deal. Cause all of a sudden now you have to have a new electrical circuit run across the house to that. And so sometimes these little ads can be a massive deal, especially.

[00:28:00] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, are we the only ones that have slabs?

[00:28:15] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah. And again, when you're doing those tub to shower conversions, you got to break the drain out and you got to change the pipe and it's, yeah, but you know what? There's so many old homes that it, the market's giant, you know? Yeah,

[00:28:35] Eric Goranson: My craziest slab on grade home construction project to had was early in my career over in Eastern Washington in the tri cities. And for all you guys listening over there on 610k on a on the radio. Yeah, you'll know what I'm talking about I ran into a government house and this was for the hanford nuclear project up there General electric in the town of richland built a bunch of houses in there And one [00:29:00] of the early ones they had messed up on the plans thought there was a basement And dug it out for the basement and then realized oh, wait a minute.

[00:29:33] Eric Goranson: We went in there. We had to basically tunnel out Where we were doing, it was like notching out wood, but concrete just to get the plumbing in there because they poured that whole thing full of concrete.

[00:29:47] Eric Goranson: No, you had the best. I couldn't believe it. They just kept obviously ordering concrete trucks to fill it in.

[00:30:06] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, that is remodeling. We see all kinds of crazy stuff. I found stuff in walls and feelings and all kinds of weird stuff.

[00:30:31] Eric Goranson: Why isn't this working? Come to find out the drywallers didn't want to carry the extra drywall down. So they put three layers of drywall on the inside of that. And so they had to go back in and take out the three layers of drywall just because they didn't want to carry it back down. You're running into that stuff before and it's a head scratcher when it comes to rebuttling sometimes.

[00:30:58] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. [00:31:00] So what tips do you have for homeowners out there before we run out of time? What tips do you have for people out there that are really starting to think about? Okay, I gotta take care of this bathroom.

[00:31:16] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah, with us locally, the way it happens, and I, by the way, I had this dream of rolling this out in every NFL city in the country, but I couldn't find very many contractors that wanted to. We franchised it and rolled it out in Kansas city to test if we could replicate it.

[00:31:53] Matt Plaskoff: We collect some information. We have a 1st phone call with them. They talk to a designer could be me could be 1 of my other 4 [00:32:00] designers. Designer chats them up about their project. We give them a ballpark to start with based on, uh, photographs. And in our experience, we have a system that will ballpark these things very accurately just from having built over 4500 of them.

[00:32:33] Matt Plaskoff: We have a software program. We wrote it allows us to price it right there on the spot. So we don't go away. They don't call us every day for 3 weeks. Where's the bid that whole thing? Yeah, they don't get like parties, cheese, paper bid and whatever. And so we, we quote it right there to the penny because we have every detail, including the knobs figured out.

[00:33:19] Matt Plaskoff: Somebody who would be interested in doing a bathroom project as a design bill, because then you don't get the finger pointing. They're responsible for the whole thing. And what I would do is I'd say, listen, here's some pictures of my project. Here's what I want to do. Give me a ballpark. Just give me a range.

[00:33:58] Matt Plaskoff: But I think [00:34:00] the point is that ideally, if you can have a design build situation where you, I would not sign a contract to build a project. Unless every detail was worked out up front for all the reasons that you and I talked about, because you don't want it to change. And if you can't find a design build contractor, then you don't have a choice other than to potentially hire a designer to help you make all those selections.

[00:34:45] Matt Plaskoff: So that's, but going out and trying to buy all this stuff yourself and figure it out, and I don't know how much time you have, but that some people enjoy it. Well, and that's a

[00:35:13] Eric Goranson: Do you have time to step out of your meeting during the day and go run out to the home center and exchange out while your plumber's charging a couple of hundred bucks an hour sitting there to put that thing in? Are you going to be caught on call 40 hours a week while they're working? That's the tough part when homeowners go out and buy stuff.

[00:35:48] Matt Plaskoff: So he bought all the valves and everything for the house. And I won't mention the manufacturer because I wouldn't be nice, but he bought name brand stuff and he bought it. We put them all in. And [00:36:00] tiled all the showers and all that stuff. And we turned on the valves and they made noise. And he came back to me and said, this is your thing.

[00:36:24] Matt Plaskoff: Sure enough, this manufacturer name brand manufacturer, the Venturi had not been deburred in the valve. So it was making all this noise. And so it turned out that because he saved, I don't know, 3000 bucks on valves for the whole house or whatever, because he didn't pay my markup. He had to retile all the showers and I've had other stories like that.

[00:37:01] Eric Goranson: these plumbing wholesalers will give you the discount, right?

[00:37:31] Eric Goranson: Let your contractor get your stuff. It's going to save you in the long run, especially when you calc calculate in that liability.

[00:37:50] Matt Plaskoff: I would walk like 30 blocks. That's not going to happen today. I'll pay 20 bucks, 25 bucks for valet parking because. My time is worth more than my money. [00:38:00] And so that's what it is. In a lot of cases, people are like, I can save some money, but you hit it on the head, the ultimate look, we buy half a million dollars a year worth of fixtures from a name brand company.

[00:38:29] Matt Plaskoff: Yeah. That's because a, he doesn't want to put it anywhere. He doesn't have a warehouse and B, he doesn't want to be responsible for it. I don't blame him. You

[00:38:44] Eric Goranson: You're going to be calling the manufacturer and you're going to be finding a plumber to come out and fix that stuff for her. That's

[00:38:48] Eric Goranson: going to

[00:39:00] Matt Plaskoff: The challenge is trying to figure out for yourself the numbers, because that's where it ends up. Because if you're comparing, uh, design build contractor to a guy who's to, or gal, who's just doing labor only, it's too hard to compare. So it's happening and that's where people get hung up because they're like, this guy says it's 30 grand to do the bathroom.

[00:39:45] Matt Plaskoff: Good luck. So you don't want the, it's about risk. Return in a lot of cases, but yeah.

[00:40:19] Eric Goranson: So I'll tell you what, they're quick here on that stuff, but that is not the case in most states.

[00:40:34] Eric Goranson: a wild west and it's not in the west.

[00:40:38] Matt Plaskoff: The wild mid Midwest or Northeast

[00:40:43] Matt Plaskoff: exactly. Yeah. It's

[00:41:00] Matt Plaskoff: So you can find us on the web, of course, oneweekbath. com. O N E E E K B A T H dot com. It's a beautiful website. There are a lot of projects on there. You can look at pictures, get ideas. You just hit us up through the website and Robbie in our office will connect with you and take some information. And then you'll work with one of the designers might be me.

[00:41:57] Matt Plaskoff: We do some of that stuff as well, depending [00:42:00] on the project, but yeah. And I so appreciate. You having me on also work with remodelers, by the way, doing some coaching to help them develop their systems and their businesses. I've got a guy in Texas. I work with. I've got a couple others. And so people need help reach out to me.

[00:42:30] Eric Goranson: Thanks, Matt, man. That is awesome. And yeah, you've got a great system here. So we got a huge remodeling audience out there of contractors and even builders.

[00:42:47] Matt Plaskoff: Thanks Eric. I'd love to bring it to Portland too someday. Maybe somebody up there wants to do it and I'll teach 'em how to do it.

[00:42:59] Eric Goranson: [00:43:00] We will do it. Alright everybody, I'm Eric G and you've been listening to you around the house