A few more of my contractor stories.
Hired a one man band electrician to wire my hot tub. Told him we needed to follow the existing conduit and we could drop down into the same 12X12 outdoor box. I assumed this was the junction box leading to my dock lift. Guy drives 100 miles round trip to buy conduit and wire. Comes to do the job. We open the box and the wiring was already run by the previous owner since was going to put a hot tub in the same place.
Guy started grumbling about having to spend time returning materials….I stopped him right there and told him this fuck up was on me. Add in your travel time for both trips, you’re not eating this!
I paid him $600 for a pigtail from the box into the hot tub and his time and thanked him. No warranty bs if something went wrong because “homeowner wired in electrical”.
Wife wanted the family room painted and a 14’ pipe mounted on a high wall to hang pics from. Called a friend that uses a Mexican crew in his rentals. Guy shows up for a quote. Walks in, looks around and said he’ll get back in touch with my wife. Room is about 25’ X 30’ with a 19’ high peak cathedral ceiling. Couple weeks go by and he quotes $2400 including paint.
We got another guy that was a one man crew that drags his teenage son in to help move furniture and ladder work. He quoted $850 and we buy the paint because he’s been burned in the past with the housewife not liking the color she selected.
One problem with this guy though, he wouldn’t shut up long enough to tell him everything you wanted done. He was a talker, not a listener. When we got to the hanging the pipe part he was lost. “And I agreed to this?” I had it planned out and it was going to be easy to do if he would have just shut the fuck up and listened to me. He was trying to over complicate it.
Needless to say, painting was done and he would come back Saturday to do the pipe. Saturday he had truck problems. We never heard back from him so we pulled our ladder out yesterday, stacked bricks on the stairs, laid out the platform and the wife went up the ladder. We got it done.