Home Renovation Industry: Looking Back on 2023 and Predicting 2024
As 2024 kicks into gear, the team at Big Fish Contracting is taking a moment to appreciate a year filled with growth, challenges, and unforgettable projects. The opportunity to enrich our community and change people’s lives and homes was the greatest gift we received last year, and we delivered in abundance. From revamping roofs and siding to entirely transforming homes, Big Fish Contracting has served the Southeastern Wisconsin area with creativity, dedication, and a commitment to delivering exceptional results, and we’re incredibly grateful. So, let’s celebrate everything we’ve accomplished as a team and a community—and make predictions of what this new year will bring us!
Reflecting on 2023
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Impressive Stats: A Year of Expansion
Big Fish Contracting completed over 500 roofing projects, over 100 siding projects, and two dozen remodeling projects. We are amazed at our progress and how far we have come from the days when handling 40 projects in a year was considered a good year. We are grateful to have built an incredible community in the greater Milwaukee area. Big Fish Contracting has evolved beyond our expectations, and we are excited to continue showcasing our versatility and expertise in various aspects of construction.
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Favorite Home Project: The Full Home Renovation Transformation
We’ve done a lot of projects that hit home on what we love so much about our jobs this year. But this full home exterior renovation project takes center stage among the year’s standout projects. We may have faced challenges along the way – challenges that had us at the house at 10:00 PM with a tarp and a prayer – but we grew as a company through this project. This project encapsulated what we love most: creating massive transformations that impact people’s lives.
We love helping people create brand-new homes without leaving the place they love. Homes are palettes for creative expression, and each transformation is like a work of art that we create in collaboration with our clients.
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Personal Growth and Challenges: A Year in Perspective
In 2023, personal growth was a significant aspect for most of our team. Our workload increased compared to 2022 (which was already a big jump from 2021!), pushing us to manage different components and multiple crews. Adapting to this shift required patience and trust in the process, and we’ve had to learn to navigate the challenges that come with construction projects by managing our expectations. Despite potential delays that could cause worry or stress, we continue to strive toward maintaining clear communication about project timelines or potential delays and ensuring transparency with clients, employees, and vendors.
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Unexpected Discoveries: Learning and Growing Together
With our growth, we’ve also upped our knowledge of insurance and homeowner policies and all the legal hoops that come with them. Here’s some advice: it is important to thoroughly understand your home insurance coverage from a professional and personal perspective, especially regarding home remodels. In Wisconsin, the weather can wreak havoc on your house because we’re prone to hailstorms. Make sure you know your policy—it may be boring, but it is worth it in case you need it!
But enough of the sentimental and the technical stuff. We’ve got some theories about what 2024 will hold when it comes to exterior design trends.
Upcoming Trends in Home Renovation: A Glimpse into 2024
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Our Observations
Drawing from what we saw in 2023, we’re huge fans of the CertainTeed Landmark Pro line of shingles. They’re high-quality and offer a wide variety of options to match a myriad of different homeowners’ styles and tastes. In 2023, black was the most popular color choice due to its timeless, visually satisfying contrast. Certaineed’s line has some new colors that we think will be a hit in 2024, especially “Espresso.” (That’s a team favorite here!)
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What We Anticipate
We’re interested to see what happens with the recent trend of all-black houses and dark-on-dark color schemes as a bold alternative to blue-grey or classic beige and brown tones with white siding. While we love how unique this style is and how much the dark homes stand out, we’re curious to see how long this trend will last in relevancy and style. The blue-grey and beige-brown are popular because of how easy they are to style, and they’re easy on the eyes, so they’re not intimidating to potential new buyers.
We’re not going to tell you not to go for the dark siding and accents—we love uniqueness, and it’s your house that you get to live in and love! But keep in mind if you intend to sell your home anytime soon, this style is still relatively new, and no one’s quite sure how it’ll pan out. And for those exploring design options, we provide tools like project mapping so you can visualize different color combinations for roofs, siding, gutters, windows, etc. The Hover tool also offers full 3D exterior design renderings, enabling you to experiment with various colors and structures before deciding.
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What We Want to See More Of
To shake things up, we hope people who usually go for the classic combination of white siding, black roofs, black windows, and black gutters make a splash with something more out-of-the-box. For example, we love the look of a trendy copper-penny gutter to add some dimension to your home’s exterior!
Overall, we want to see more homeowners straying from the typical color combinations and home styles and leaning into unique, creative, bold expressions when it comes to the look and design of their homes.
As Big Fish Contracting looks forward to a promising 2024, the team remains committed to delivering exceptional results, fostering, and growing our community, and embracing the evolving trends in home remodeling and the construction industry. For a more in-depth discussion of takeaways and trends, check out our new podcast in which team members Erik and Tanya share their experiences, learnings, and what they expect in the coming year!
