I have 4 rehabs going right now, and one more that I am waiting on the sellers to move out in 9 days, then I’ll have 5 going. I needed bad tile ripped up and new tile laid at the one on Thompson Rd, so I called my normal flooring company and they quoted me $4 a foot, for a total invoice of about $1,800. My handyman’s assistant’s boyfriend had just gone into the tile installation biz for himself after 10 years of working for someone else, so we decided to give him a shot and save a few hundred dollars. He gave me a shopping list to go to Lowe’s and buy tile and thinset (would have been included in the other bid) so it took an hour there getting someone to bring the tile to our truck, which sank to the axels when they loaded the pallet (I thought Tim was going to die!) then we drove to the house (30 minutes from us) and the tile guy had already left, so we had to unload 42 boxes of tile ourselves, but we were on our way to a meeting, so we went to the meeting sweaty! Then he calls and asks for an advance…I usually only pay when the job is done, but he had torn out all the tile already, and he said he needed money for the dump fees (and money for supplies, but I had already bought everything…go figure!). So, I gave him $300.
Today (8/21) he calls and asks where the grout is…he never told me he needed grout (there’s another trip to Lowe’s and a 30 minute drive and another receipt), I thought that was included in the bid (it’s included with my normal tile company) and now he is asking for money to go to the dump (which is what I thought the first $300 was covering), and now he says he needs money to cover fixing what the handyman had messed up on the backer board for the tile counter top (no, we don’t usually do tile, but laminate comes in 12 foot lengths, and this is a 12.5 foot run of counter, and no, that was not in our original figures on the repairs).
So, anyways, to sum up…to save $200, I have now spent almost 2 hours at Lowe’s and 2 round-trips to the house (30 minutes each way) is another 2 hours, and add up all the nickels and dimes he’s adding…and, I haven’t even seen the quality of his work yet!
Next time I’ll have my regular tile guy do the work, he measures, delivers, does all the work, and sends me a bill when it’s all over…my 4 hours of time could have been spent more efficiently somewhere else (like making offers!).
Lesson Learned: If you have good tradesman…let them do the work, don’t try to save a few bucks, it will backfire on you most of the time.
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