Chicago, IL

Social media for remodelers working alleys, back porches and two-flats

Almost nothing about filming a Chicago kitchen job gets decided in an office. The truck parks in the rear alley because there is no driveway, the cabinets go up a wooden back porch one at a time, and in a three-flat or a courtyard building the stair your crew is standing on belongs to an association rather than to the person who hired you. Those facts decide what your camera can reach, what you are allowed to publish, and which neighbor is talking about your job somewhere you cannot see. What follows is the part of a social plan that only applies here.

The kitchen comes up the back porch one box at a time, and nobody films it

On a narrow lot with no driveway, the delivery route is a priced part of the job and the part an owner quietly worries about.

Material comes off a truck in the alley, through a gate, across a small yard and up a wooden back porch. Every box, every cabinet, every piece of stone that two people can carry between them. In a three-flat that is three flights with a turn at each landing.

The owner has already thought about it. They have watched somebody wrestle a couch up those same stairs, and they want to know what a month of deliveries does to the treads, the rail and the back door.

So film the carry once and film it properly. The treads covered, the rail padded, where the crew set the door so it would not swing shut, what the alley looked like after the truck pulled out. A finished photograph cannot answer any of that.

The route also decides what there is to film. A stone top that will not make the turn at a landing has to be cut into pieces or come in through a window opening, and the day that happens is the most watchable day on the whole job. Know which one you are doing before the morning of.

Your client cannot give you permission to film the shared stair

In a courtyard building or a converted three-flat, the common parts belong to the association, and the owner who hired you does not own them.

Your client owns the inside of their unit. The vestibule, the common hallway your crew tarped, the rear stair, the roof and usually the exterior belong to the association, and approval to work in those spaces is not approval to publish them.

Ask the management company before the phone comes out past the unit door, and get the answer in writing. Boards read social media, and a clip of a crew propping a common door open with a bucket ends up on a meeting agenda.

The same logic covers the people on the other side of the wall. In a two-flat the tenant downstairs is in your audio whether you wanted them or not, and a neighbor crossing a courtyard is in your frame without having met anybody on your crew.

Inside the unit you are working on your client's word. Everything past that door has a second owner, and settling which is one phone call rather than a guess you find out about later.

The garage you parked in front of belongs to somebody who never hired you

Alleys here are shared access, and the people whose access you are using talk about your job in a group you cannot join.

Garages open onto the alley. A container placed where it suits the crew can sit across a neighbor's apron for three weeks, and after a snow a truck sitting in a spot somebody dug out by hand is a genuine grievance on that block.

The complaint rarely arrives on your page. It shows up on a block group or a building thread, sometimes with a photograph of your truck in it, and you hear about it when your client asks why the man across the alley is annoyed.

You cannot post in most of those groups and should not try. Your client can. Give them something worth posting before the container lands: where it will sit, which days the alley is tight, a number to call. A short clip from the crew lands better than a note because it has a face in it.

Then film the end of the week. The alley swept, the gate latched, the apron clear. On a street where parking gets negotiated by hand all winter, a video of your crew leaving the alley the way they found it does more for you locally than the finished island ever will.

The owner downstairs is your next kitchen, and it is not the same kitchen

A two-flat is often owned by the person living in one unit of it, so a single client eventually needs a rental spec as well as their own.

An owner-occupant landlord watched your crew go up and down the back stairs for a month and never had to be sold on anything. The work they need next is the unit above or below, on a different budget, on a schedule set by a lease date rather than by a holiday.

Nobody films that kitchen. Surfaces that survive a turnover, a layout that can be cleaned in an afternoon, an appliance chosen because the part is easy to get on a Saturday. Owners of two-flats and three-flats in Logan Square, Pilsen, Bridgeport and Ravenswood are looking for exactly that footage and finding cabinet showrooms instead.

Raise it while the crew is still in the building. Access is already solved, the stack and the shutoffs are already understood, and a second unit filmed on the same trip costs you an afternoon rather than a mobilization.

The parts of this that would be true for a remodeler in any city, we keep on one page at /industries/kitchen-bath-remodeling/social-media.

Questions we actually get

Can we film in the hallway of the building?: Not on your client's say-so. Inside the unit, with the owner's permission, you are fine. The vestibule, the common stair, the courtyard and the exterior are usually the association's, and a work approval is a different thing from a filming approval. Ask the management company, get it in writing, and keep unit numbers out of the frame either way.
The board only allows work on weekdays between set hours. How do we film around that?: Accept that the board's window is also your camera's window. In a converted three-flat or a courtyard building, nobody is coming back on a Saturday to catch a shot that got missed, so anything worth having has to be captured while the crew is inside anyway. Treat every day in the building as a chance to bank material rather than planning a shoot day that will keep getting moved.
What is worth filming in January when the alley is a mess?: The alley being a mess, for one. Beyond that, winter is when the work is indoors and the buying decisions are being made, so the carry up the back stairs, the wall opening up and the stack finally exposed are all available. A garden unit needs a light brought in. Bring one and stop waiting for a bright day that is not coming until March.
A neighbor complained about our dumpster on a block group. Should we answer there?: Usually you cannot, because most of those groups only admit people who live on the block. Which is why the client is your channel: ask them to post the container dates before it arrives and to relay anything that comes back. Then fix the thing on the ground the same day, because the alley is the only part of your job that neighbor can see.
Is a rental kitchen worth posting? It is not our best work.: It is worth posting because of who is watching. An owner-occupant landlord in a two-flat or a three-flat is a repeat buyer with a second unit and a lease date, and there is almost no video anywhere aimed at them. Post the durable layout, the turnover-proof surfaces and the schedule built around a move-in, and you will own a category nobody else in the metro is filming.

What is different here

Work that disturbs paint in housing built before 1978 brings federal lead-safe certification and disclosure obligations, which affects a meaningful share of older coastal stock. Permitting and inspection sequencing is municipal, and in condominium buildings an association's own approval process frequently governs timing more than the building department does.

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Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

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