Homeowner Help

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This guy wants a bid to drywall his garage. He did me the favor of hanging the walls himself. So I'll have 1 to 2 inch gaps from his rock to the ceiling. And he did the walls vertical with nails, many missed studs, Even better!!! These are the jobs I use to just walk away from. Not sure how long it will take so do you think I'd be out of line to just charge for materials and give him one hourly rate that will cover me and my help, or just give a real high bid. I know it's an open ended question, just want to get an idea of how you guys handle some of these jobs when your dealing with a cluster f*#ck.

kgphoto

I show them the mistakes and detail the costs to fix them. Either band-aids with waiver or done right. Both prices high enough for me to do it right when he is not looking. If it is too high for him, I pass.

This way I don't buy extra liability by doing HIM a favor.

jaros bros.

Most homeowners know that they've made some mistakes when they take on a project and have a contractor come in to finish off the job. Try not to belittle them and just give them a decent price taking into account what you're going to have to do to fix their mistakes. No reason to add insult to injury.

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Josh Jaros www.jarosbros.com Remodeling in The Woodlands, Texas

trptman

I agree. the only thing is if he balks after giving him a price.. you may need to explain better why your price seems "high" to him. If you make fun of him, I can't imagine you'll get the work. the way money is with a lot of folks these days, you can't blame someone for trying to do something themselves to same some coin. At least he wasn't changing his own electric service or something.

Tony M

I went to price a job last year, where the boarding had been done by a roofing labourer. You could put four fingers in the gaps in the corners of the vaulted ceilings, and nearly every screw was proud. The owner said that the boarding wasn't that special. I told him to get a couple of pallets of new plasterboard and re do it. He said that wasn't going to happen, so I said I won't be taping it then. You cant polish a turd.

Darren@Partners

Sure you can. You just get a lot of **** on you before your done.

CrpntrFrk

Any time I ran into a job like that I would always point out the mistakes and tell them that because of the way the board was hung my warranty was void. Most people just think that there is no skill or method involved in hanging rock but when you tell them how it is suppose to be and why they ussually understand.

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DO IT!! DO IT!! DO IT!!