Summer 2009
Stories
Easy Home Repair Tips – Volume 8
By Mike Nelson and Terry Tomsha
How Not to Treat a Contractor
Hello Neighbors! Since we wrote in the last edition about ways to avoid disreputable contractors, we thought we should even the playing field with a brief primer on how not to treat your contractor:
- Don’t delay in making decisions.
- Don’t make changes then become outraged by the additional costs and delays.
- Don’t ask a contractor to provide a solution to a difficult design problem, then use a different contractor for the job.
- Don’t challenge a contractor’s expertise with sentences that include the words “my brother-in-law thinks,” or “I took a shop course when I was in 10th grade and this is what I think.” If your brother-in-law was that good, why didn’t you hire him?
- Don’t withhold final payment because you know it will cost the contractor so much money and time to take you to court that it will not be worth it.
- Don’t cling to the belief that contractors have x-ray vision that enables them to see into walls, and thus are aware of faulty wiring, plumbing or structural issues before the start of a job.
- Don’t steal the contractor’s workers by taking them aside and asking them to come back when the job is finished to do another job.
- Don’t schedule construction during the third trimester of pregnancy, during a messy divorce, or anything else that you should be concerned with more than your remodel job.
- Don’t buy appliances or building materials online or from a discount house to save money, then expect the contractor to make everything work when the products are damaged or don’t arrive on time.
- Don’t call the contractor in the middle of the night and on weekends about problems that can wait until regular business hours.
- Don’t hover about a job while murmuring, “It doesn’t look finished.” (It’s a job site. It doesn’t look finished because it’s not finished.)
There’s probably a few other no-no’s, but suffice to say that if you treat your contractor with the courtesy and respect that you expect in return, you both might get through your next remodel project with smiles on your faces, and the results you dreamed of.
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