Tradesmen and thier Worth

[Chippo1]

Long story , some one I know considers any tradesman at best a ner do well whose only mission in life is to do a shoddy job for an inflated price.

These people moved into their current house 22 years ago , slowly messing around with it and never completing work in any room really other than maybe the kitchen (Wickes and that took 5 years ) and down stairs shower room.

More recently decided to refurbish their north wales rental property as their holiday home , been doing that for around three years, 600mile round trip !

Last 6 years been planning major works to house as it was pretty awful in layout , every one said knock down and start again including two architects, structural engineer and I believe town planning , but no , they retained three floors and about 6 ground floor walls , then doubled the floor plan and built up providing a largely timber frame structure above including Airbnb or granny flat. All very nice I must say externally and crikey they employed a local builder to do the major construction , an architect and structural engineer. They resisted the local building control in favour of consultants as their opinion was building control at council were to restrictive in their application of building regs , lol funny the consultants were sacked and. It was back to building control .

Builder seemed to be ok , but once completed their contractural obligations it seemed they had done a poor job in my friends eyes and my friends could have done a far better job ! Strange their last architect snagged the builders work and found what I thought was a reasonable amount of minor defect which the builder corrected in less that a week , very complicated roof structure for a start. The builder then run away as fast as possible think he had enough , leaving friends to install wiring , plumbing , Solar PV , heat recovery system , windows (£60k danish triple gazing, as all uk glazing is substandard !) more insulation, (roofs now have minimum of 300 mm of celotex and most walls at least 200mm) plaster boarding , plaster skim ( dry lining is no good) all second fix joinery, and refit 20year old kitchen back in original position ( don’t forget this took 5 years to fit originally )decorate , design and fit complicated stair case and all manor of stuff including effectively 4 bathrooms.

Now my thoughts are, being kind this house might be complete in 10 years , assuming he doesn't die , he has a heart condition , and often works 3 or 4 days 24 hours a day in the computer industry he’s 63 ! , they won’t employ another tradesmen full stop , in fact they are going to remove and refit the slate on the pillars at the front of house as they weren’t happy with the job builders tiler did , never got him back. I asked about elect certs and gas certs ect ect , they said no problem not required as they did a much better job again than any tradesmen could ever do., last visit noted that two second hand plastic CCUs had been fitted ! Boiler moved and refitted it’s a 20 year old pitterton to be used for UFH

Now, having worked as a tradesman for a good deal of my life and employed many others in the lift industry , I actually find thier attitude so disrespectful to generalise like this, and frankly to some extent insulted. We all know there are tradesmen who are less than reputable but most aren’t. And I really can’t work out how they can get past building control with out certificates for gas and electrics etc .

I wonder when it’s all going to go wrong, trouble is they are close relatives and now I have voiced a few concerns re time lines ect I am seen as a nay sayer , my real worry is she will be left holding the baby so to speak , half finished house.

Is it all worth it even if they finish will they be able to enjoy the house of their dreams

Bit of a rant , sorry chaps and girls , but I need to say some thing to some one!!!!

[Neelix]

I won't work for cheap skates OR people who insist I install the cheap carp they buy

[fin]

recently ive refitted an old kitchen.... this was for a friends mother. shes a land lord has like 5 or 6 properties. couldnt possibly afford the new kitchen so ended up with part new part old. the old part was flipin rotten. i spent ages messing about with it all.

then another job recently was for an older woman. dont think she was exactly short on money at all. refit old bathroom cabinets. but with newlt supplied sink etc. nowt was compatible. extremely frustrating and someone else had pulled it all apart so it was a bloody nightmare.

never fitting old stuff again. not even gonna entertain jobs like that in future

[Argyll]

I've been asked to patch up old fences recently. Before I'd hum and ha now I just tell them straight that I'm not interested.

I had a couple of jobs booked that they cancelled the day before. My guess is they've got someone cheaper. It's bloody infuriating, to say the least.

I now add 10% on top of jobs after pricing them. Never used to but now fed up selling myself short.

[fin]

ive had bother with my achilles for ages now. went to have treatment on it and the person doing the treatment charged £50 per hour (treamtent seems to be working like) another person i know has a small shop and also does massages and beauty treatments. they charge £25 per hour and some treamtents £35 per hour.

seems that people are fine paying that but dont like it when they have to pay that or less but over a longer period.

recently i went to price a job up fitting skirtings. floors had been overlaid with a smoothing compound (people call it leveling compound or self leveler but its rarely like a sheet of glass flat) ive done a few jobs following this company in recent years and nearly always have to scribe some of the skirts so i put in 2 days plus glue etc.... got told too expensive. so clearly someone else is not going to scribe them to the floor so there will be gaps here and there no doubt.

[Megaross]

Sound like tight arses, snobs and lazy ones to boot. Imagine half of the house will be out of date by the time the rest is done.

I miss being in the trade tbh and if I'd stuck with it I'd probably be on more than I am now.

Good tradesmen are worth their weight in gold, some people might not want to pay for a good job but plenty of others are lining up.

[Chippo1]

Tight , maybe , snobs maybe , lazy not , thinking about this it’s just an odd philosophy, that results in things taking huge amounts of time and effort with little end result and little upstanding of the economics involved therein. Much if it is out of date as I said , kitchen , reusing an old Sonus hard wired system to. They also do some odd things like when they fitted Solar PV they purchased a spare inverter , just in case, yes we know inverters have limited life , but tech moves on so they now have an old fashioned inverter with no capacity to charge batteries just sitting in a cardboard box which may or may not ever be used.

Just been told , they are now taking down a number of stud walls and rebuilding , originally installed by the builder, because a few are 3mm or so out of plumb and not truly square by a few mm ! So again time and effort for no real gain.

This house will never be finished and enjoyed.