And that’s the primary problem with the new triple contractor rates, House quality is going to severely decline in the next 10yrs as people try to do everything themselves because professional home repair has become grossly unaffordable.
I’ve been repairing and home owning for over 25 yrs. I make more money and can no longer easily afford home repair the last 3 yrs. As such, I shudder the think of what garbage is being done in homes with no capacity to afford the new higher rates right now. Even a box of construction screws and a can of paint is crazy expensive now.
As a contractor who takes pride in my work, seeing things like this baffles me - and honestly, it’s not that uncommon either. I just don’t get it. Even if they somehow manage to get the client to pay for this, there’s no way they’ll be hired again. Meanwhile, about half of my clients are repeat customers. No wonder it's so easy to stand out when the bar is this low.
Thats the thing. If a customer forgot to mask off an alarm panel or two not taking the 5 minutes to do it just makes you look like a fucking asshole. If they didnt mask off a bunch of stuff then you call them, tell them that either you need to add to the estimate or rebook the job.
This is 100% a painter who's worked with this person/company before. In the contract I'm betting it says "before we paint, remove all utilities and covers from the wall, anything left will be painted"
The first six times they did the work, stuff was left up, and they spent an hour removing everything before they started. This time, they said fuck it. We told you to take it down, this is what you're getting now.
unless they change their task rabbit account to a new name. This is the downward slide the tech gig economy is causing everywhere
Every time we had an issue with our house the HOA Karens would get into fights with us about how they can find someone on task rabbit for cheaper than the contractor we wanted to hire. Every time the work would be shit and their account would just suddenly vanish.
At least before shitty contractors had to keep registering new LLCs. Now there is literally no ramp at all to changing your business identity and paying $5 for 20 fake reviews
If I had you and you allowed me to pay you so I don't have to learn every home repair and maintenance task myself, I'd hand over my life savings. Slight exaggeration, but not by much.
I am learning enough skills that I could eventually quit my day job and become a contractor tho...
A job that takes a professional half a day could take me a whole weekend.
But having to play "how likely are they to fuck it up, and how much of a pain will it be to fix" drives me up the wall so much, I often just buy the tool and do it myself.
My time to do it: 15 hours, plus £200 in materials.
Cheap tradesman: 8 hours, £450 total, non-zero chance I'll have to rip it out and re-do it myself anyway.
Specialist tradesman : 5 hours, £900-1200 total.
So it either ends up being lots of work, a gamble, or lots of money. Quick, good, cheap, pick two!
I'm a good amateur mechanic. But I cant guarantee I wont order the wrong part, be sent the wrong part, have misdiagnosed the problem, the job turns out to be a nightmare etc... So as long as the other one is running, I have time and ability to sort it out.
This pretty much sums up my view of contractors. I know enough about home improvement these days, after years of DIY, I could probably get a job as a subcontractor.
Landlord wants the job done fast, meanwhile the contractors know that the landlord isn't the one actually living there so they can get away with cutting corners.
my house used to be rented out and got the "landlord special" regularly.
i was sanding the walls to prepare for a coat of paint and i found a baseball sized hole they had just put painters tape over and proceeded to paint over the tape.
that is impressive laziness. it takes almost no effort, time or money to plaster. especially when you're already painting
Tbf that could have been done by tenants who figured the landlord would use that damage to argue they should lose their entire deposit despite not costing nearly that much to repair properly.
Not that it wouldn't be plausible that the landlord did it themselves or hired someone who didn't know what they were doing but were willing to do it cheap, like Ricky.
I once found a large, external hole which had been filled with carpet and painted over with masonry paint. They’d placed a garden table in front of it, so we wouldn’t notice on viewing and moving in
I've also lived in houses that had the entire bathtub/shower painted over with high gloss paint. It looked tacky af and it flaked obviously. Not that we had the time to complain about it though, that was very low on the list of issues. Have you ever seen mushroom caps sprouting from the ceiling? Same house
My landlord spray-painted over all our cabinets with vinyl. Did a shit job and now paint flakes come off into our dishes. They said it was too expensive to fix 🤷♂️
Good chance this is illegal. Though it varies wildly, many jurisdictions have implied warranties of habitability that require your landlord fix stuff while giving you a legal path to withhold rent or pay for repairs in lieu of rent when they don't.
Oh it's 100% illegal but it's not worth the battle. Landlord is just a landlord on the side, her main gig is an attorney. Sounds like an expensive nightmare for us if we even try to push it beyond what we already have.
The landlord wouldn't have done that because they know it'll have to be replaced. That's a low skilled idiot's work, the same thing happens to me at work. It is possible that the agreement between the landlord and the painters stated they weren't responsible for masking anything that wasn't to be painted