I’m redoing my basement. Building, among other things, a wind trainer room with a built in home theater.
I get contractors to come over to bid on installing a mirror wall and new lightling.
Yesterday a contractor arrives and pontificates on what they can’t do: “Well, you know we can’t do this because of this… This won’t work becasue of that… We can;t book you until the end of the month…”
Hey man, if you don’t want the job, save my time and say so- no hard feelings.
Next contractor shows up. A stooped over man with one eye (I’m serious). Takes one look at the job, measures, sketches, makes a phone call: “Easy, no problem, Tuesday morning, 9:00 AM, $XXXXX.XX dollars. Pay when done.”
I ask a few questions, he answers them. I say, “See you at 9:00 AM Tuesday with check in hand.”
Done.
Why do some guys (first guy) make it so damn hard?
Why do some guys (first guy) make it so damn hard?
Some of them make it hard because they don’t really know what they’re doing, and some of them make it hard because they know *exactly *what they’re doing, and they want to do it right. Sort of like what I hear about bike fitters.
Unfortunately this is the way the industry is. Many of these folks had the wrong mentors. You may have great carpenters out there, but bad business people with poor customer relation skills.
If they don’t want to do a job you will get one of two lines. I can’t get to it until (insert some future month or year), or they’ll jack the price up to the point where they are motivated to reprioritize what they are doing, leaving another of their customer at the bottom of the stack.
The guy you ended up going with is probably the kind of guy that does one job at a time and does it to perfection. He’s probably up front about the process and isn’t motivated by greed.
If you have a contractor that drives up in a Hummer, lock your doors and hide.
This type of stuff, contractor/remodeler design and sales person, is what my wife does for a living. Her company is A#1 first rate. Expensive, yes, but the work is increadible.
I cannot tell you how often she goes to look over jobs to find out that the project is not a ‘new’ undertaking, but rather the home owner went with another contractor (always less expensice) and now have been stiffed in one way of another. The story is always the same for the owner, well this guy came in a quickly told us what it would cost, assured us he could start right away, and was less expensive. When you hear those type of things, well something is probably not kosher.
Just FYI - when my wife bids a job, there are a minimum of two meetings with the owners to carefully go over the job and specs. A detailed outline of scope of work and related costs are reviewed. As a first-class remodeling company they always have a good bit of work, so no job ever starts the nex week.
It’s worse if you live in a rural area. I built a garage on the side of the house and called four guys to come over for an estimate. One guy lost his license on an impaired the day before, one guy didn’t show and the third guy showed up a month later after the job was completed. Only one guy of the four showed up.
I know what you’re going through - several contractor quotes and many months later, we’re finally getting our garage redone. The price ranges were huge! $5K - $15K differences for supposedly the same thing. The problems they pointed out were all different, and there was concern over permits - plus whether the contractors were insured. And I started getting paranoid about the whole thing. Can’t wait until it’s done…