B-Rant

- submitted by J.F. on 03/24/2008

Notes from the Toolbox: What Your Contractor Wishes He Could Say

By Johnny Framinghammer

Let me preface this column with a statement: I love what I do. Meeting new people is always interesting. The variety of jobs I get hired to do keep things lively. Working in different neighborhoods (even though they tend to all look alike after awhile) is fun. I am my own boss and I set my own schedule. It's all good.

But being a contractor in the suburbs is not all bread and cheese. Indulge me while I download some baggage, and remember the Third Rule of Plumbing: Shit Flows Down. So, from worst to first, the Ten Things That Homeowners Should Remember When They Hire Someone to Work In Their Home:

10. We have ears. All of us. Plumbers, painters, handymen. We don't want to eavesdrop. We don't want to overhear the conversation with your neighbor about what happened toward the end of the party last weekend between you and the other neighbor's husband. Okay, truthfully, we do, but it's none of our business. We're here, we hear, deal with it.

9. Nobody - especially us - needs to see your dirty underpants. Period. We may purposefully look away to be polite, but that doesn't make them invisible. Put ‘em in the hamper for cryin' out loud.

8. Don't flirt. Just because the subdivision you live in has a name that sounds like Wisteria Lane, real life is not anything like Desperate Housewives (and by the way, there is nothing attractive about desperation). I admit, when I was a teenager I harbored the universal fantasy that some Mrs. Robinson out there was going to get all personal with me after I mowed her lawn (oh get your head out of the gutter). But I'm not a teenager anymore, and cheating ain't cool.

7. Put that kid on a leash. I love working in homes with kids, but almost everything I use to do my job should not be handled by children. I am in your home to improve it, not to entertain your children. That doesn't mean we can't be friendly, nor that I mind explaining what I'm doing from time to time, because that is fun. And it is always cool for you and the kids to make us cookies, but let's observe some boundaries here, people.

6. "While You're Here..." presumes an efficiency is available. As though the fact that I am already working in your home means it would be nothing for me to perform this one extra task... and maybe this little extra thing. Or perhaps you could just... Whoa, hold on there! Most of the time, most of the people I work for I genuinely like - really. Therefore, I don't mind doing a little extra - it builds good will and helps me look like a good guy. But come on, have some sense, don't over-do it and take advantage. The reality is that the time I'm spending at your house working for free doing the "while you're here's" is time I rightfully ought to be in your neighbor's house doing work for pay. I love what I do, but I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't get paid. So let's stick to the proposal, shall we?

5. Know what you want. Or at least give it some thought before you drag me into it. I end up doing a lot of consulting with customers (or maybe counseling is a more precise term) to help them sharpen their focus on what they really want. But at a certain point, you just gotta make up your mind. The difference between "light ochre" and "twilight grain" is imperceptible to the human eye. Just pick one!

4. Leave me out of it. I try to be friendly, and I like to think I have good relationships with my customers. Especially when I'm working in the home for a few weeks or more, it's vital. But even though I'm there all day, I have not taken up residence and am not part of the family. I'm pretty perceptive. I can tell how you feel about the fact that your husband is going out of state for a golf weekend with his buddies even though you're 38 weeks pregnant. And we don't blame you for being pissed. Just please leave me out of it. I may agree that he's a jerk, but at the end of the day, he signs my check.

3. Can something be done? Absolutely. Should it be done? I can't make that decision for you. It's your money, you decide. There's a cynical saying in this business: Anything is Possible, but Everything Costs Money. I can give you the parameters, and idea of what it will cost, and how to do it, but whether you should do it is not a question I like to answer. It's your home, and even the craziest, most expensive idea might make sense for you. At the end of the day, you've gotta live there, you've gotta love it, regardless of the cost (unless you're planning on selling the house, but that's a column for another day).

2. Don't prod us into curbside quotes. We know you're eager to learn whether you can afford that deck, or the new kitchen, or whatever. But the reputable among us stand by our estimates. Give us the chance to go home, make certain we've thought it through, and can calculate a real, fair cost. Inevitable "curbside quotes" come back to bite both sides on the bumpus.

1. Contractors are people, too. Just because doing our jobs gets our clothes dirty, don't assume we're something less than you are, or than you think you are. Many of us - okay, some of us - went to college, read interesting books, are capable of stimulating conversation. All we want is to be loved, is that so wrong?

Johnny Framinghammer is a remodeling contractor pounding nails across the northern suburbs of verdant Pittsbugh, PA. (Names have been altered to protect the innocent)....read more rants