The next contractor I met was basically the opposite of the Italian-Israeli. He was an older guy, early 60s maybe, that wanted me to walk him around and show him the projects I had for the house. He had a few suggestions on my planned projects and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Through the course of the meeting, though, my opinion of the guy swung wildly. He listened to me as I explained the projects I wanted done. Plus! He only uses sub-contractors because he doesn't want to deal with employees. He's "been in the business too long and not interested in dealing with all that." Not in itself a minus, but the matter of fact tone in which it was said rubbed me the wrong way. Also, in that same tone he told me that he didn't get permits, he had the subs do all that, he "didn't want to deal with all that" either. Minus. He has been in the business for over thirty years here and in South Africa and is a member of several professional organizations, including one that is apparently fairly selective as to who it lets in. Big plus. He was also willing to let me do whatever aspect of the project I wanted to do, and supply any materials I chose to. That was a nice change from the Italian-Israeli.
So I went back and forth on this guy up until the end, when the balance shifted. We had been talking for probably about 25 min, walking through and around the house discussing the projects, and he told me about his process. He was going to get back to me with a budget, basically a ballpark estimate based on what he had seen that day, and if I agreed that it was in budget, then he would bring in his subs for a more concrete number. Not necessarily terrible, so long as I could get some real numbers before I sign a contract, but here comes the final rub. After all this talk and walking around, he gave me his card and asked me to "send me an e-mail with everything we talked about today and I'll get back to you with a budget." Seriously?! You want me to write all this stuff down for you? Isn't that part of your job, to take notes on potential jobs so you can give me a budget? I guess he didn't want to deal with all that note taking stuff. There seemed to be a lot of things he wasn't interested in dealing with. Sort of made me wonder how many other aspects of the projects he wouldn't want to deal with, either.
I did wind up sending him the e-mail, just because I wanted to know how much he thought it would cost, but I had already decided not to use him. I didn't bother to respond to his e-mail. You know, I just didn't feel like dealing with it.
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