Contractor: Friend or Foe?

I am in the middle of interviewing a few contractors for some home improvement projects. It got me thinking on how stressful and tedious to hire a contractor. You do not know their work, have to rely on references, and the conversation you have with him/her. However, the good outweighs the bad.

1. Save money by saving time – I just finished reading “The Four-Hour Workweek.” One of the things that Ferriss says is that people tend to think that a price a contractor is charging is ridiculous. However, take a step back and really think about it. You are saving that time to do tasks that are more important and you are able to do at the same time. If I hire a contractor that is charging me $45/hour to assemble furniture, light electrical work, and install crown molding. He/she can probably get it done in half a day. I can’t imagine getting all of those things done in that time. It would take me double or even three times as long, and so I would have actually spent more money and time on the projects than just outsourcing.

2. Good quality work that you could not have done yourself – These contractors know what they are doing. They will provide you work that you would have probably done a shoddy job doing yourself. I am buying tons of stuff from Ikea. I remember once I tried assembling a dresser from there. It was so unstable that it was practically useless. This time I am going to be smart and hire someone else to do it and make sure it is super stable. The beauty is they will usually redo it until the job is right. Can you imagine trying to do something you are not an expert in perfectly the first time so you don’t have to keep redoing it?

3. They want you to hire them when you have a next project, so usually they will do the job right - Contractors will work twice as hard as in-house employees because they want your repeat business. If they are smart, and usually they are, they will do such an amazing job the first time that you will want to hire them again. Do not forget about how important Word-of-Mouth Marketing is. Your in-house employees do not care about that.

I may be bias; however, contractors are a good alternative nowadays. Use them.