When You Hire A Bad General Contractor

I was a self employed contractor for thirty years and this kind of work is more common then people are aware of. Kept me busy.

“If you thought hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.”

This is why I always have so much anxiety in finding people to get work done on my house.

We’ve just had the same experience on our house. The builders have gone into liquidation, left several clients with half finished jobs. One doesn’t even have four walls and it’s mid winter currently, 3 degrees at night. All the work they did will have to be redone, inspections all failed, in the event of an earthquake nothing is properly held down so the whole roof could collapse now. They cut up the wooden floorboards unnecessarily, it was native timber very expensive as you can’t cut native forests down anymore obviously. Basically complete horror show

Looks like one of my weekend DIY projects.

Thats not a "contractor" it was a guy that had some tools. I literally lost my breath laughing when I saw that toilet.

This is a classic ""you get what you pay for" Moment. If a contractor is much cheaper than the rest, there's probably a good reason for it.

I had an architecture/home design course in high school that required us to turn in blueprints and sketches of houses based on “clients’ wishes” (aka our teacher giving us a list of what to include, probably to make sure that we didn’t forget to draw in at least one bathroom or any bedrooms at all) and let me tell you… this house is what would happen if the lowest graded blueprint had been built by actual high schoolers themselves. The floating toilet is literally just a real-life representation of an unfinished digital blueprint on any interior design software lmao

This has “ I know someone who can do it cheaper “ written all over it

This is a case of taking the lowest bid. I can tell the floor is the cheapest on the market. If subfloor has issues that are not addressed this is what happens. As far as the kitchen I’d like to see the architect drawings too see where the discrepancies are. They put flooring on the steps. Bathroom wasn’t done in a day or two so clearly no one was checking in on them. There is more than just a contractor to blame here.

This is why I do all my own renovations myself. Takes me 10 times longer due to all the research, planning, and inexperience, and probably costs twice as much just because I’m not immersed in the trade and I don’t know a lot of the common tricks to save money on materials, but in the end it is what I want, 100%. I realize not everyone is capable of doing things themselves but that’s when you ask yourself: “Do I like it enough the way it is to not have someone who doesn’t care make it even worse?”

My blood pressure was rising as you walked through that disaster. My head exploded when I saw the second floor bathroom. This is so damn infuriating; and the icing on the cake is that the home owner likely wont get a penny back from that jackass.

I gotta hand it to the general contractor… most people OD before they can manage to get that high.

I worked for a bad contractor… I’d see things that weren’t right, and he’d see things that were “good enough” his whole crew shared his mindset and wouldn’t even allow corrections to be made! I felt embarrassed to be part of that particular team…

This is unreal. You need to share the bases of these people so nobody else gets screwed over.

I can't stop Laughing, Thanks. That toilet is so well placed. A modern Art piece. Lol.

Its obvious what happened here. The homeowner took the lowest bid and got mad when they got what they paid for. "Good labor isn't cheap. Cheap labor isnt good"

As a painter I get real great looks at everything, and I'm usually the last or second to last in a new home. I always point out things like this to the homeowners, especially when the builder/laborers try to steal my tools.

I’ve been reluctant to buy for… well… ever. Stories like these are what hold me back. Appreciate you confirming my bias!

this reminds me of my own home, me and my fiancé are redoing everything and by looking at everything under a magnifying glass you can for sure see that everything was DIY. Luckily we already planned on redoing everything so it doesn't matter too much to us! They built our pantry on top of the deck 😅