title: habits all successful seducers share
text: one of the foundations of living a good life in todays times is having a good place to call home whether you want a solid comfortable place with which to pursue your hobbies recover from the days tribulations and just to be or whether you want a bachelor pad for your romantic pursuits or both a good home is essential to the modern man
  i purchased a home and i decided to be my own general contractor for the renovations my home was an asoriginallyfurnished home of the s and i brought its multicolor painted green shag carpeted datedness up to a sharply trimmed hardwoodfloored modernity while being of a somewhat timeless style a general contractor is a person hired by the architect or engineer to run the job site source the labor follow the schedule get the materials and execute the vision of the plan here are ten things i learned as my own general contractor
   there are good contractors and there are bad contractors 
  you will run into both good and bad contractors out there a good contractor does good work at good value follows the schedule and is honest and doesnt lie to you a bad contractor will do any or all of the above i fired a contractor who had good value but did poor work could not follow the schedule and lied to me i paid more for a later contractor who did excellent work hit the schedule on time and was a perfectionist give a bad contractor a second chance mainly to see how he corrects it and if he fails to shape up cut him loose
  a good contractor has the correct amount of paperwork but no more some firms i turned down did things by hand and had no contractors license and that is too little whereas a firm that gives you fifteen pages of legalese allowing them to take out an uncontested mechanics lien on your home if you do not pay is too much
  a lot has to do with the presentation of the representative tradesmen are naturally rough people who work with their hands but a man that does not have a good handshake good eye contact and is evasive on important details is shady
   good contractors cost more and they are busy the best indicator of a good contractor is that they have a busy schedule and i mean they are booked often a month or so in advance the guy i fired kept trying to work me in on the weekends and at night which while it seems like hes busy hes actually operating in the red and trying to use your funds to cover his other jobs
  a good contractor will negotiate terms up front and not change them and he will when awarded the job put you in his schedule at an agreedupon time my best contractor was so busy that i had to do other things first before i could get his firm to bid my work and they did what good contractors do when they are too busy they turned down my work until later
   you need to establish a reputation 
  general contractors in an area have a reputation amongst their customers and the contractors they subcontract to and the only difference between those that do it for a living and you is that you have no reputation
  a busy contractor will work with a gc who will give them work in the future over one who will not i was an unknown so the busy guys during the busy season fall and preholidays would pass on me and work with ones they knew
  however word got around to the others that i gave jobs of good scope and paid on time i hired a sub contractor for a set of jobs and once they found out who i used as my electrician it was who they subbed their own electrical jobs to they called and the electricians vouched that i was picky as all hell but paid on time and let them run their own schedule and have the run of the house at that point i was in
   good contractors know other good contractors 
  reputation works the other way too a good roofer who i only turned down because he was too busy and wouldnt meet my timetable has a brother who runs the electrical shop mentioned above although you should always get multiple competing quotes bid to three two will generally respond and pick the better one the deciding factor was that his brother the roofer ran a good shop and it stood to reason he would too
  my plumbers knew my ac guys and my chimney guy my flooring guys knew my kitchen cabinets guys everyone works with and around everyone else and i saved all my paperwork and contact info for all my vendors so that on any future projects i know who to call for what and even if i dont know i know who to ask for recommendations
   it will take more money than you think it will 
  home renovation is expensive and its mainly for the nasty reason that once you commit to action you can get hit with extra costs you can mitigate this with good bid scopes that you give to your contractors so all parties know what is what but you will find that the home will need things you didnt think about or that the hourly rate of the laborers is higher than you budgeted or materials will simply cost more
  part of the balancing act that is required is you will learn what to spend money on now and what to spend money on later right now i live in the place finally but i still have construction paper down on my floors as i have not yet bought furniture pads or rugs for the high traffic areas my bathrooms have plumbing in but no mirrors cabinets towel racks or toilet paper holders entire rooms are without furniture all of these can and should be taken care of later but things like flooring and painting needed to happen earlier
   it will take more time than you think it will you may not need something this complicated but a gantt chart shows dependency of one job on others
  contractors have their own schedules and there is also the time outside the work time where they have to arrange a site visit you have to juggle quotes they have to then write you in then they do the work then theres followups and punchlists and then finally that job is done and you pay them
  you cant do some other jobs before you finish the first one this is where having a master schedule and knowing who is doing what and affecting whom matters my floor guys had to have the run of the place when they were finishing the floors but they did not when they were laying subfloor and i was able to have plumbers in that day as well contrariwise i could not start the kitchen install until after the floors were done
   some of your ideas are wrong some are right i had my own thoughts about what to do with the place sometimes i was wrong it was stupid to try to reuse the baseboard that was over the carpet and put it over the hardwood even though it was the same color and i listened to my contractor and used new sometimes i was right my backsplash behind my sink was supposed to match the countertops colors and the ratio of white i wanted was correct but i was persuaded to add more by my contractor
  know what is important in your vision and be able to explain your intent but the contractor might have a better way of how to do it in mind than if you had told them the how instead of the what i have a rather creative way of running the drains on my basement fixtures they did what i wanted but did it in a better way than i would have suggested and they got it almost completely right to my intent in the process
   there will be gaps in your manpower coverage 
  the one thing a professional general contractor does that you as a private operator will not is do all the basic stuff themselves a gc will hire an electrician to wire fan boxes for mounting fans but he will install the boxes and hang the fans himself my electricians did install and hang them for me anyway
  this was for two reasons and this is how you can mitigate having little shit jobs that no one will want to do as a single job the first is to provide all the materials yourself which also allows you to pick out what you want i had a pile of fixtures fans and bulbs laid out for them with a plan of what went where and this helped them just throw them up after the technical wiring part was done
  the second reason is to provide a good scope of work will a plumber come install a single faucet maybe will he come install five and a garbage disposal certainly thats a good days work so if you have little jobs have a lot of little jobs and youll get more interest
   there are things with which you will not be satisfied good enough is good enough 
  this house is old but renovated some things simply cannot be fixed without massive upheaval i cannot have perfectly flat ceilings because the drywall is  years old and it had popcorn texture on it some things i did not address i have new baseboard and new window trim but the door trim is original and has the nicks and stains of time
  some things were done but were not perfect the drywall where my kitchen cabinets bulkhead used to hang from the ceiling has one spot where even after two reworks still has a hairline paint crack some of the window film has pull away lines and theres a couple things trapped under the film in places one of the toilets will top itself off for a few seconds signifying a small seal issue you cannot have perfection but you can go for reasonable excellence
   code enforcement sucks the man sucks someone called code enforcement on me and i had to go get a permit of a cost of x of the renovations cost mainly so they can jack my taxes up
  i got the permit and i expect my taxes to go up the inspector was a real schmuck as most appointed officials are but the jokes on him as i only got the permit on what i had left to do and i omitted some things that would still happen but werent too noticeable
  with code enforcement and county ordinances the idea is reasonable cooperation and being able to explain things away with saying you were mistaken instead of flouting the law i went and got the permit when i was busted for it but they only know a third of the story had i gotten a permit earlier perhaps whatever nosy neighbor that ratted me out might not have called at all another tactic which i will do on a future project i have planned is to get the permit months ahead of time then hit it hard over a few days and be done before anyone notices
  conclusion if you have the time the patience and the skill to know exactly what you want who to get for it and how to juggle a massive schedule running your own home renovation is a lot of fun and very educational if you want it done faster and just want to deal with one person for everything then hiring a professional general contractor might be the way to go instead
  read more  essential subjects that we will teach children at the rok international school