Pick Your Battles - House Contractor Rant

[TomSeller]

I'm now living in the house I will retire and die in so I won't be buying another house. It was always my practice to buy an existing house rather than build one. I never wanted the headaches of having a house built for the reasons described above. There is too much work to do yourself and the good contractors are booked up way in advance anyway. The ones that are not are the ones you don't want. I do most remodels myself but prior to moving in this house I had the popcorn ceiling removed and the whole house painted by some brothers originally from Mexico. Super good experience with them. The lead brother constantly was asking me what he could do better and asking if I was satisfied. I invited another contractor who showed up with his hat on backwards and talked nonstop. Once he saw the brothers were bidding he excused himself and never even quoted the work. I bet I was lucky I did not use him.

 

[roadhunter]

This is always good to keep in mind. You can only pick 2.

 

[2ndhalf]

This is always good to keep in mind. You can only pick 2.
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I'm going good and cheap on that one! Ha Ha .. I got some time but not some money

 

[roadhunter]

I'm going good and cheap on that one! Ha Ha .. I got some time but not some money

I'm right there with you on the $. Good/cheap is a great compromise for home improvements IMO and poor/happy is the way to live, LOL.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I was my own general contractor for my house and it worked for me.

Built a Church building 3 yrs ago, and hired a general. They were great. Can't say enough good things about them. They had a guy on site daily who kept things going.

 

[KennyG]

This is always good to keep in mind. You can only pick 2.
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If you are lucky. A lot of times you only get one.

 

[2ndhalf]

If you are lucky. A lot of times you only get one.

.. and if you hire a relative who needs the work you could get none.

Which I have done. It turned out not too terrible. I hired him to finish some drywall supposedly he knew how. He was the wife's cousin and was laid off. I paid him about 60% of what I told him I would when he was about half done and I finished it myself. I said "I think you have it to a point I can finish it if you don't mind" and wrote him check. He seemed as happy to be done as I was to have him done.

He was well on his way to really screwing up my upstairs. I'm all for helping out a guy out of work but not at the expense of screwing up my upstairs forever.

.. Never hire a relative unless you are really certain the do high quality work and even then can be risky.

 

[2ndhalf]

Because I am in a hurry did get it finished I hired contractors to do work I could do myself and also figured professionals would do a better job than I could.

Often true, not always. When we built a new house in 1998 I had a local carpet store do all of the flooring. We picked out good quality carpet and Pergo floors for kitchen and bath.. all was wonderful.

The Pergo install crew arrives and I'm at work, my wife was at the house to let them in. All was still good.

The crew proceeds to tell my wife that they had never installed Pergo before but they watched the video the night before. All was not as good.

As they start the install she said they sounded like a couple of complete morrons trying to figure it out and were smearing that expensive Pergo glue all over the tops of the really expensive laminate flooring. All was really not good. My wife calls me at work and tells me what was happening and said that there was a haze of glue over the top of the floor they had installed... Holy cow!

I called the owner of the carpet store and said , we need to talk. I told him specifically I wanted experienced installers and that was obviously not what I had.

I will make a long story short and say he met me at my house with a REAL pergo installer, factory trained and very good. He said I don't know if either of you are religous men but this is a F'n disaster. That guy fixed it to my satisfaction but he had to really work at it and cussed and swore the whole time :laughing:

The carpet store owner said he had already paid the nuckle heads for the install of my carpet and would it be ok if they finished the carpet install. What do you think I said to that LOL..

Those guys will not set foot in my new house.

 

[TractorGuy]

GC's are essentially just contractor babysitters. Making them do the job right, making them show up, clean up, etc....

Contractors have earned their reputation.

This is how it's SUPPOSED to work. The GC I hired to build my house did NOTHING. If he was ever on site he would sit on the step and not say a word to the subs even if I pointed out a problem. He would let them go ahead an mess it up then make them patch it after the fact. I'm not going to go into all that went wrong with my house build but I will say I did most of the GC's job and it was the absolute most stressful time of my life. I basically pissed away $20,000 on a GC because the lenders would not allow owner/contractors at the time.

 

[Deere Dude]

The concrete driveway stopped about 6 feet from the frontage road, with gravel finishing it off. He questioned the oddity and the GC said he only paid for so many square feet, but he would be glad to finish for an additional amount. I don't know the conversation between them but the contractor should have either told him it would cost extra, which wouldn't have been a problem or the sub screwed up

I just can't imagine anybody stupid enough to think he can ask for a 150' concrete driveway to be widened from 14' to 18' and NOT pay any more money.
Makes me wonder if there's more to the story.

He made a number of changes in the build and totally understands the "if you change you pay concept" and wouldn't have been a problem with whatever the contractor required. I think the contractor just found out he underquoted it and found he could make it up this way.

Either way, a decent contractor would have said, "Your driveway will end 6' shorter than the blacktop" ahead of time so he could have finished the job. In any case, I have to see him next week and I will try to remember to ask the particulars of it.

Maybe my history with contractors make me distrust them to a point of disdain.