Funmurphys: the Blog

Home Improvement, the Beginning

We went to the neighborhood trustee meeting last night to get architectural approval for our plans to add on to our house. I was worried because a few years ago, when the other fearless leader was a trustee, neighbors of ours had a hard time getting approval for the front porch they were adding. They kept getting asked to provide better drawings. So I was nervous, but we didn't have any problems. They looked our drawings over for a couple of minutes, asked a few questions, and signed the drawings. I guess the difference was, our neighbors kept submitting something they sketched up, and we gave them real architectural drawings, drawn up by an actual architect (and paid for with actual money, too).

The hardest part so far has been getting a contractor. In the spring, we wanted to get bids on the addition. So we contacted a couple of firms that people we know worked for. We got them to come out, and then we had a hard time getting bids out of them, and when they did, the bids were astronomical. The same neighbors who built their porch knew a guy who wanted to do our addition. He called a couple of times, begging us to let him come out and bid. So after getting the astronomical bids, we did. Then we had a hard time setting a date to talk to him, and after he came out and we told him what we wanted, we never heard back - even after repeated calling. So we gave up on the addition idea.

This summer, we decided that since we weren't going to do the addition, we'd redo the master bathroom. The shower was in bad shape, the tile floor was in bad shape, and the other fearless leader didn't like the countertop. So we began our search for a contractor. We were pleasantly surprised with the first one we tried. He was polite, showed up on time, returned phone calls, and gave us a bid in a reasonable amount of time. The only problem was, he did things a certain way, carried a certain grade of material, and that's the way he did things. We decided to check with another contractor to better explore our options, and he was equally pleasant to deal with. We went with the second guy because we could get what we wanted. When my wife was complaining to him about how lousy the contractors we've dealt with this year (to get the carpet installed we had to issue two ultimatums and listen to a sob story about the contractor going to the hospital with our measurements), he told her they did room additions on the side. He gave us a reasonable bid, he seemed to check out, so now we're having the addition and the bath done. Can you say debt? I thought you could.

I think I'm going to steer my kids away from white collar work, and try to get them to become tradesmen. If you are competent in your work, punctual, pleasant to deal with, and give the customer what they ask for, you can clean up. It's too late for me, but like all fathers, I want my children to have a better life.