Okay, not all of them, but what's with those people who say they'll show up and don't?  Do they really think we have nothing better to do than to sit around waiting for them to show?  Or how about those people who are willing to give us a quote without measuring or even seeing the house?

We got a quote on retiling our bathroom.  $5500.  The guy said he'd go over there while the floors were being redone.  Called me with the quote.  I had asked the floor guys if anyone came over.  'No'.  Well, that's just great, so I asked the guy, "What color is my bathroom?"  He said, "What do you mean?  It's just your standard bathroom."  Um, not really...it really shouldn't escape anyone's notice that my bathroom is PURPLE!

Whatever.  Then there's the painter lady who gave me the quote to paint my house $2200 + $100 per color.  She never set foot in my house.  Just asked me the square footage. 

Or how about the guy who insisted that my husband be there.  Kept going on and on about the need for my husband to be there.  When I told him that we weren't going with him because of his outrageous estimates ($11K for electrical he didn't even look at) , he asked, "Oh, can I talk with your husband?"  So I said, "Oh yeah, I also don't want to work with a sexist asshole like you.  Lose my number."  Or the guy who came in, I walked him through everything and asked for written quote.  He balked.  "Why should I give you a written estimate, when I just told you?"  Oh, did I mention that out of the list of 11 things I wanted a quote on he gave me a quote on 3 things, the total:  $14596. 

But there have been happy stories:

We got our floors redone for a lot less than we expected and they look great.  Granted the floor people ripped the roller shade not 2 min. after I walked out the house; came back in after putting the baby in the car and two guys were staring at the hole they made, no apologies or no offer to replace.  They also sanded some of the paint off the tile on the hearth for some reason. I also wish they were a lot more diligent about keeping the dust out of the other rooms.  It was really like they didn't try.  But our floors look good.

We met a general contractor who specializes in older homes and he really knows his stuff.  He's more expensive than we wanted to spend, but I'm impressed by him. 

We had our home earthquake retrofitted by Stern's Construction.  Gilberto and Salvas came in right when they said they would, finished when they said they would and were very professional.  They cleaned up everything too. 

There are no comments to this entry.