In the begining stages I had some contractors give me bids for landscaping alone close to $120,000. Which includes hardscape and landscape for both front and back. I completed the projects with subs for $80,000, saving $40,000 and I did extras which they would have never done.

IF you can always hire subs, trust me you will always save in the long run.

If I have learned one thing in all of these years doing repair and/or remodel is that you constantly run into surprises or unforseen complications. When you start tearing into a wall or roof or foundation or whatever, you then can start seeing problems, causes, others mistakes, and literally their cover-ups.

In certain situations such as when you can’t tell with 100% certainty what is causing a problem I will tell a customer that until I know what the problem is I cannot (and I don’t) give an accuarate estimate of costs. I can get in the ball park but that is even ify sometimes.

As far as bids are concerned it is not always foolproof. Word of mounth and knowledge of construction (take some time to read up on the subject at hand) are the safest bets in finding a good contractor.

I have customers that tell me to do the job and trust me with the price and I don’t take advantage of that. I am certainly not the fastest guy around but I do better than average work and my customers trust and recomendations testify to it.

On other thing-quite often I get money up front on jobs and feel totally justified in doing so. I even have customers at times ask me if I need any more money during the time work is in progress. So ther are legite, good competent, contractors out there.

If you pick the right people, you can get two of those. You will never find all three.

By the way, your photos are downright scary. Really, really scary. In fact that looks like butchery (by what we term, with reason, crackhead roofers) I would go back up there and “think like a raindrop”. Now.

Poor workmanship and the inability of homeowners to make their own repairs or at least see what was done incorrectly is the result.

Perhaps if we put less emphasis on academics in public school and a little more on home economics etc this sort of issue might not be so prevalent.

The roofer came highly recommended from our internal neighborhood yahoo group. I don’t believe we even got a second bid as we were impressed and had glowing reviews from neighbors.

The painter was selected on suggestion from the roofer and while we asked for another bid, they never showed and we went with the roofer’s recommendation.

When our heat pump went out, the guy we used for heating/cooling issues quoted us a VERY high price. Enough to send us to Angie’s list and some other bids. We were pleased with another company that was well reviewed. They came in less than our repair guy and we felt comfortable with our choice (our “repair guy” didn’t have enough volume to even be listed on Angie’s list).

Between our neighborhood yahoo group and Angie’s list – I always feel we’ve got a great starting point.

Oh we’ve replaced gutters too. I was amazed at how quickly they went up when professionals were doing it!

Looking back, we are very happy with the roof, so-so with the painting (but it wans’t terribly expensive) and happy with the heating/cooling thus far (still waiting for heating to be used a bit more).

You wrote”The first guy had been with his company for 37 of its 42 years. I liked him. He pulled up a section of the roofing to reveal that “the guy who did this didn’t know what the hell he was doing”. It was just one layer (instead of three) over some felt paper. “No wonder it’s leaking,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all.” There were already soft spots in the plywood too that need to be dealt with. He said the job would be expensive, but the work would be designed to last a lifetime. The job would take him two or three days, and he was two or three weeks out. (I can’t find his bid or I’d share it here; it was highest of the three.)”

We had a guy redo our garage 5 years ago completely sided and roofed it and it took him a little longer because he does this on the side but when he was done it was a job well done and he cleaned up everything. We have since hired him to fix our roof which was damaged in a storm. He shows up when he says he will and cleans up the mess when he is done. I am OK waiting for him since I know he will do a decent job.

Hint: the guys who can’t get over to your place to do the work tomorrow are busy because they’re good at what they do and have multiple customers to keep happy.

I am truly in awe.

I lost bids to competitors, of course. People that underbid. People that didn’t have competent employees that were being paid a wage commensurate with their experience and ability. People that promised to be there tomorrow to start and then sent one employee on a six person job so the project took six times longer to complete.

Our company got called in a LOT to fix the project after the contractor with the winning bid completed the job. It costs a lot more to pay a contractor and then pay another one to come in and tear out all the (substandard) work that another contractor has done, dispose of it, and then redo the job correctly.

I think the key is being 100% HONEST with yourself about your skill sets. For example, it continually blows my mind to see how many people are terrible at painting. It’s perfectly ok to not be good at painting, but if you’re not, or if you’re not willing to take the time and do all of the necessary steps, of course it will look terrible and scream “DIY!” The same goes for ANY project. There’s no reason many people can’t do really good, safe DIY work, but you have to be willing to put in the time to research, learn, watch, plan, and then play to your strengths and be willing to hire out the rest.

I did 90% of the rehab work myself but I did sub out some of it to contractors.