In 2010, we hired a contractor to extend our kitchen to include one small room for storage. The agreed price was 500,000 pesos or roughly $10,000 at that time. The contractor asked for a 50% down payment so they could start working. And they did work upon receiving the money. However, when 1/4 of the job was done, the contractor was again asking for an installment. Oh, wait a minute. That's 50% of the cost that we gave and they had delivered only 1/4 of the project. That's unfair. Sensing that we are being scammed, my husband rescinded the contract and hired carpenters to finish the job. The work was done in a month and we had some of the budget left for us. In other words, we had saved money.
Good for you. We had some damage a few years back when a hot water line in our crawlspace broke, warping one of our floors. The insurance allotted us a certain amount of money for the job and we hired a contractor who was an acquaintance, although not really a close friend, who agreed to take the job on for the amount of money approved by our insurance. He tore the floor out and, for some reason, did some damage to a wall as well, then, short of completing the whole job, he said that he had used up all of the money approved by our insurance, and would need another two thousand to complete the job. I wasn't about to pay him more than we had agreed upon, and finished the job myself. It wasn't until more than a year later that we learned that he had told some people that we had cheated him out of some work he had done on our house.
@Ken Anderson, that kind of worker you had was our fear whenever we would need a worker for house repairs. When our fence was leaning and looking like it would collapse, we hastily asked around for people who can do masonry job. We got 3 and they were working all right provided that they work under supervision. When left alone, they tend to be destructive. When my husband went to a half day meeting, our maid who was supervising the work called my husband because the workers wanted to modify a wall of the septic tank. The workers said that the fence that is being reconstructed would hit that wall of the septic tank. When my husband came home after lunch time, he was able to resolve the problem. In short, there's no need to redesign that septic tank wall. It will just add one day of work. Get it, huh.
its always so tempting to hire people you know. Especially if you know they need the work. Everytime Ive done it, it turns out to be a mistake. when talking to your friends about their jobs, I guess they typically aren't going to tell you about any of their bad work habits.
On the contrary, we had several sad experiences. That work on the kitchen extension we had in 2009 was a discouragement. The contractor was the niece of a good friend. And even if the price was a bit high, we agreed for the simple reason that we can trust them. But it turned out that the niece had scammed us. After paying 50% of the agreed cost, she was again asking for another installment after putting up the foundation which, according to an engineer we consulted, was only 20% of the work. That incident ruined our friendship with her uncle who was really sad about that. But what can we do, that uncle, our dear friend, led us to that snake pit.