I am not a mean, vengeful, spiteful person, but I swear, if the company we hired does not correct their crappy roofing job soon, I will contact every consumer group and home builder’s association I can find about them.
By the way, I now more about roofing than any homeowner should. No, really, ask me about drip edge and nail lines and exposures and underlayment and ice guard and how many nails you need for what wind speed. Go right ahead, I know it….
Learn a lesson from this experience. One I learned a while ago. Read up on a subject BEFORE hiring a job out so that you appear to know as much as a contractor knows. It intimidates them and they can’t pull the wool over your eyes.
I refuse to use contractors unless I cannot do the job myself. At this point, the only thing that might get hired out is pouring a foundation for a garage because I really don’t fancy mixing all that concrete. It works really good. Today a roofer working on “moron’s” house next door where the utilities are shut off, asked to use my water so his workers could hose down and my electric for their compressor. He then started asking about my roof and soon realized that my roofing knowledge included slate and box gutters, copper and tenne coated stainless steel and tuck pointing chimneys. Far more than he knew. So he didn’t try to convince me that I needed a new roof.
I always get drywall installers hitting me up but they know nothing about plaster repair or smoothing out walls. So they leave me alone. A little knowledge goes a long way. When we bought our place I was able to negotiate a fair price because I had researched the tax records and knew more about the house than the owner. I also took a bunch of photos while touring the place. It appeared that I knew what I was talking about though my knowledge was really limited at the time.
Hope this helps for future projects. Of course, after reading about how to do something may prompt you to attempt it yourself.
I like Jane’s idea of a letter writing campaign from fellow HouseBloggers. Let them know they are in the spotlight. Cockroaches scurry in the light.
Gary:
Dennis knows a lot about many things, and a little about almost everything else (thank goodness!). I guess where “they” get you is that you just cannot watch every single thing these guys are doing.
The slope of our house is fairly steep…and high. A broken elbow during a fall a few years ago has reminded Dennis he isn’t as young as he once was and viewing from a distance doesn’t always show you everything.
This is the first thing we’ve ever hired out. It will (probably) be the last. We’ve done things ourselves because we want them done correctly. I think, after watching the furnace repair guy, we are even in a position to do regular maintenace on it this season.
By the way, Gary, I am eagerly awaiting your plastering tutorial. We have a wall in our upstairs bathroom that needs repairing/rebuilding. If you can include a lesson on scoring plaster to resemble subway tile, I’d appreciate it. See herehttp://am4sq.com/WordPress/?p=26