> Even if you hire someone, that can be a massive hassle, you have to worry about being ripped off
This is a huge problem with home ownership, at the very least where I've owned homes (California and Michigan). The quality of contractors varies dramatically, and many will happily rip you off or at the very least just do a bad job. If you can't get a good recommendation from someone you trust, you really roll the dice hiring someone. IMO, if you're going to own, you should be willing to do a lot of work yourself. At least then you know exactly what's happening to your house.
> Plumbers probably know a contractor who can give a deal.
They also know the contractors who won't rip them off.
A house down the block from me has taken nearly a year to have siding put on and painted, in less time than that has taken, another house by me was torn down and a completely new one built in its place.
This is the hard part. All the good contractors do this themselves, or they charge so much you don't make any money on the sale, or they're booked out 3 months in advance.
Don't hire that person. Hire someone with insurance. You as homeowner are really unlikely to incur any liability as long as you are not substantially directing their work. Let them be the expert doing their job.
> Only downside is replacing things that seem to break all the time when you own a home :P
The nice thing is that you can choose to fix them yourself and save money. You can also use that as an opportunity to upgrade them and do the job right.
Once or twice a year, go through your house and check on the major parts like appliances, fixtures, etc. Make a list of what is due to be updated or repaired soon so you can save up money and do some research. Determine what is in your wheelhouse of what you can fix and what you need to call in a contractor for - personally I'll do appliance repair or drywall all day, but I refuse to go climbing into trees to prune them. Aim to buy good replacements - avoid fancy (easily broken) features, but splurge to get better made stuff. Don't be afraid to use quality non-oem parts either, since they are much cheaper and usually still very good. Youtube is a godsend for a lot of repair jobs.
> If you’re somewhat rural the contractors just don’t have the experience to do it so they try to quote you out of the decision.
Or they're so busy they can pick and choose their jobs. I had a quote to replace a 12 foot section of pipe come in at $700, not even two hours worth of work.
If you have to put this much effort into managing contractors and avoiding shysters, at what point does it make more sense to just not use contractors at all, and do it yourself?
This reminds me of when I used to own homes. It was generally easier to just do some home-repair job myself than deal with the hassles of finding a good contractor, and then having to deal with more hassles if the contractor didn't do it right.
"We hire a team to dig out the foundation and get professional help for the plumbing, electrical work, and drywall, but everything else we do ourselves. We'll frame and raise walls, add windows, and even put up the roof supports, or trusses.'
> A co-worker became friends with his contractor and put in his own drops in the evening after the workers left.
Was talking to my dad over Thanksgiving and that's precisely what he did every time we bought a new house. He would go over to the new house after work and install conduit to the house so he didn't have to tear up the house installing it after drywall.
I'm on the fence. With youtube, you can find so many things tricks and suggestions, things that professionals don't even know.
With my current home, I've brought in contractors half a dozen times. Half of those were terrible, terrible experiences. The other half saved me vast amounts of time. However, even with the solid contractors, for them it is a balance of time and money leading to some cut corners that, as the home owner, I would never cut on. But time, time is the thing I don't have enough of, else I would figure out most things.
I think the parent comment was suggesting to hire subcontractors to do most or all of the work.
But I agree: It’s easy to greatly underestimate the amount of work that goes into a house. Contractors will have entire crews, all of the equipment they need, and most importantly they have years of experience to know how to do something quickly and in a way that will pass inspection.
A DIYer must first learn each step before doing it, which can take as much or more time than the task itself in many cases.
> 3. My water heater was up in the attic underneath the angled roof, and there wasn’t enough clearance to get the new one in. Got kind of sketchy tilting the water heater over so I could get it inserted.
I'm starting to think this is the real reason I pay people to fix things for me (if I don't do it myself). YouTube makes most fixable things pretty easy. It's the climbing over/under the house, getting in hard to reach places, etc... that makes a repair a pain.
> My dad is a retired contractor, and has several times suggested that I call the manufacturer of a home improvement product when dealing with a difficult or nonstandard installation. Coming from the phone-numberless land of Google et al, the idea that a manufacturer would have competent, highly technical help available to consumers always sounded totally insane to me, but it's worked for him!
This is why some of the better ones survive.
The ones that come to mind off hand are the premium paint suppliers (like Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore). The first time I quit IT, I bought and extensively restored a 110 year old house for a few years. Mixing and matching coatings is not a trivial undertaking. Not trivial to plan, and certainly not trivial to un-do if something doesn't play nice with something else.
What was trivial was getting a regional VP (or better) from Sherwin Williams to register and post on historic restoration forums, and answer phone calls and emails.
These companies may be the last bastion of premium service for a premium product at a premium price on a large scale (as in there's a store in most towns).
Don't let the big box stores be the last store in your town, imo....
I’m a home owner and this was by far the largest shock to owning a home. Good contractors are not busy looking for work, they are busy with a backlog. It was only after building personal relationships with the contractors that I could get reliable service.
Wishing you all the best for this to succeed, but from my perspective you should be trying to free up contractors to focus on work as much as you are trying to connect home owners with them. Contractors are certainly limited supply and high demand.
A significant portion of homeowners do a significant portion of the work themselves. I wouldn't say it's expected that you'll DIY everything but someone buying a house that needs substantial work without the intention of doing at least some of it themselves would certainly raise eyebrows.
I couldn't agree more. As far as I am concerned this problem remains completely unsolved. I've had very bad experiences with Angi, HomeAdvisor (which now looks to be owned by Angi), Yelp and NextDoor recommendations. Finding good contractors is so hard I've changed to doing as much work myself as I possibly can.
Hiring contractors to work on your house tends to end up the same too. So much of what the early people say just magically disappears when the actual work gets done by a completely different set of people.
As an example, when we had our bathroom done, the guy they sent to finish things up couldn't even center and level the towel racks.
Let me add a bit of advice to any homeowners out there: learn to do the job yourself! I bought my house 5 years ago and I went from zero knowledge to remodeling the entire thing mostly on my own. Not only does it save you the hassle of having to deal with contractors, but in the cases when you need one, you'll be a lot more prepared to gauge the quote and timing.
This is a huge problem with home ownership, at the very least where I've owned homes (California and Michigan). The quality of contractors varies dramatically, and many will happily rip you off or at the very least just do a bad job. If you can't get a good recommendation from someone you trust, you really roll the dice hiring someone. IMO, if you're going to own, you should be willing to do a lot of work yourself. At least then you know exactly what's happening to your house.
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