I have written about working with contractors on home remodels in the past (e.g., http://transformyourhouse.com/blog/?p=10). Although most are honest and hard-working and indispensable when specialized knowledge or skilled craftsmanship is needed, I could create a blog dedicated entirely to contractor problems, tips, and advice on how to work with them. Here’s another brief war story.
I was in escrow to sell a house that we had remodeled extensively, and the buyer’s inspector came up with a list of minor issues to fix or bring up to code. So, we fixed some ourselves, and some we fixed by hiring a home repair contractor (basically he was a licensed handyman with one laborer).
After escrow closed and the buyer had moved in, the buyer brought out the inspector to re-check everything again, and he said that certain items still weren’t up to code, such as an exposed bundle of spliced electrical wires for some of the low-voltage landscape lighting. When the buyer called the home repair contractor we had used to come back and fix it, the contractor told her that he had done a substandard job because we had told him to do it “on the cheap.”
What we had actually told him was to do the minimum required to bring the minor items up to code, i.e., no “gold-plating.” For example, just put the spliced wires within an electrical box. But the repair contractor instead sought to explain away his substandard work by blaming us for supposedly telling him to do a substandard job, which of course made him look ridiculous. I hadn’t personally inspected all of his tasks because most items were minor, we were quite busy moving out, and I simply trusted that it was done appropriately.
But this serves to show that unless you have good reason to trust a contractor implicitly (such as a long prior history of superior work from him), you can’t be complacent in assuming that any work will be completed properly, no matter how minor it seems. There’s always the possibility that a contractor might cut corners, forget to do something, take advantage of a situation, or try to set himself up for another payday in the future, so you have to stay vigilant. In this case, the contractor ended up having to go back to perform the substandard repairs properly, but only after making himself look inept in the eyes of the buyer (who would have been a prospective new client) and burning bridges with us.
It’s not my intention to disparage all contractors, because they have done a lot of good work for me. But even the good ones can get distracted by other jobs and bigger clients. My blog is for giving ideas, advice, and cautions to homeowners, and so I’m focusing more on the occasional problems that might arise than on the good jobs contractors typically do.
Need advice on home remodeling, affordable home makeovers, home repair for resale, or home staging for putting your home up for sale? Feel free to contact me for a consultation.
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