Have you done repairs at home or in the building where you live? If you have, you know how many details exist that can mean the difference between a good or a poor deal. What are your tips to have it all covered, so that we don't forget all we need to understand the deal fully?
Most of the simple repairs I do by myself. For electrical repairs or plumbing, when I need to hire a person or a team, I hire by recommendation. Most times there's a lot of money involved so I don't want to risk spending it on poorly made repairs that won't last. For example, in most neighborhoods, you can find a specialist that will work cheap and do a proper job. You just have to fish for recommendations and find who that person is.
Yes, for small repairs I try to do it myself or if I know I can complete the job I can someone from an insurance I have, but if it's a really big service, like the whole building, how can we know we are hiring the right guys? We are not constructions experts after all right?
Where I live there are not many contractors so when it comes to choosing who repairs something for you, the only option you have is to ask a neighbor you know has had more than a few repairs in his home to find out who the best person for a particular job might be and what rates you should pay them. That means by the time you make that call, you already know what to expect.
That's not a bad thing really, when you know the person that is going to do the job for you, the risk of being deceived is way smaller or inexistent. I think that's one of the advantages of living in a small place because if you live in a big city you don't know people and they can easily deceive you, especially in more technical areas of activity.
I actually live near a hardware shop, so I just ask the people over there to come to our house if I want something done. Lately I have been doing some small modifications to my room, and I just wish I knew then what I know now so that I would not have spent my money on things that are not needed and small jobs that I can do myself.
I love the simplicity of how you describe that, I am assuming that you live in a relatively small location where you can do that? Where I live, if I need something done I ask for a budget, but the issue here was if it's a really big job, because such jobs have lots of complex things that we don't really get and there's always a fear that we are charged for things we don't need.
The small repair work I do myself, and even for the bigger stuff I've sometimes seen a few tutorials online and tried to do it myself (I changed my kitchen floors and I redid my patio for example). For things that involve electrical work and water pipes I'm not as comfortable messing with it because one mistake can do some serious damage so I hire those jobs out. I don't think you can ever be completely sure you hired the right guy unless he's already worked for you before, I just usually ask my friends or acquaintances if they can recommend someone good and trustworthy, and even then I ask a few different ones for an estimate before deciding on who to hire.
Not bad at all Strykstar, what does exactly means that you redid your patio? I know what you mean regarding electricity, unless it's something really simple I never mess with electricity and with pipes I did that once and I promised never again. I tried to change a faucet, but the pipe didn't want to come out and I was hours with it, never, never again!!!
I had a patio that I didn't really use and was getting into a bad state, so I decided to remodel it and turn it into a pleasant place to hang out. I put a nice stone floor (as in actual stones), built a new fence around it and put columns around in case I want to get a canopy in the Summer. It took me quite a while but it was really satisfying and it's like I gained a whole new area in my house.
Well done, I wish I had a patio too that I could arrange so that my kids could play there, unfortunately I live in a flat and I haven't got an exterior place where they can be, so they just play around the house and make my life miserable. Patios these days are a luxury and converting them into a hang out place sounds great, I don't know if I could do it, I'd possibly call in someone to help.
Calling someone to help out is a good idea, four hands work faster than two of course, but hiring someone seemed unnecessary to me, I saw a few tutorials and guides online on certain problems that would pop up and I did I did a pretty good job. I agree it's a luxury nowadays, I got lucky that the house I found had it, I hadn't exactly been looking for a house with one but it turned out to be a great extra.
Yeah, I didn't mean in that way, call a friend or a relative, I meant call someone to give me a budget, but on the other hand look online for tutorials look like something way cheaper, more time consuming of course, but cheaper, not to mention the satisfaction of being able to do it myself. I just fear the wife lol, if something goes wrong she will blame it on me.
In that case you should first call contractors and get them to make you an estimate, call several ones so you have several ones to compare. Then you look them over with your wife, who will surely complain about how expensive it is and complain that you should know how to handle these problems, then you say you'll take care of it she doesn't need to worry Then even if you do screw something up you can always say it was her idea that you do it yourself
Yep, that's how I feel, call a few contractors, minimum three and ask for the estimates and based on those estimates I can ask for more or negotiate with them to get the price down, that works all the time. I don't know if the wife would act like that though, I think she prefers to pay to have something well done...
