Home Disimprovement And How To Avoid It:
Two forces are at work in the home improvement
marketplace that spawn a good deal of faulty
work.
Force One: The consumer perceives many
remodeling or home repair prices to be too high
and concentrates his efforts on obtaining a low
or tolerable price. With this bent of mind he
fails to adequately consider overall ability to
perform the work such as financial stability,
etc. Too little thought is given to job
specifications, quality control, and timeliness
of completion.
Force Two: Young people working for remodeling
contractors see the prices the contractor gets
for his jobs and feel that he is making enormous
profits and all on their efforts. They decide to
go into business for themselves to reap these
"profits" for themselves. They start out by
bidding lower to get jobs. Most commonly these
folks possess a single hand skill and have not
had any opportunity to gain the requisite
business skills, let alone the general knowledge
background required of a general contractor.
Destructive Force: Force one meets force two,
and the new "contractor" begins to commit sins
he never dreamed of. Here are some typical signs
of unqualified contractor performance.
1. His work (when he personally is doing it)
goes well but the work of others is less
competently done due to his other trade and
management inabilities.
2. Underestimating and bidding low to get jobs,
he gets unprofitable work. When he realizes that
he can't make any profit he hurriedly and
shoddily finishes the job. He expects to get
paid and you are unsatisfied with the quality.
3. The lower quality work is perpetuated when he
is only able to attract the poorest performing
subcontractors and mechanics due to the low
prices he is charging and hence paying.
4. The work he personally does may be well
installed but may actually interfere with or be
destructive to peripheral work due to his lack
of understanding of the scope of the whole job.
5. The progress of the work on individual jobs
will be sporadic as he does not have the
manpower to progress smoothly through all jobs
and will focus his efforts on those jobs that
promise a draw check.
6. Liens show up on properties as mechanics,
suppliers, and subcontractors fail to get paid.