Posted by michaela-ATL on August 23, 2002 at 19:20:32:
it seems, that my carpenter is the one being turned over every rehab. no problem with the electrician, plumber, cha guy, floor guy, roofer, sheetrock crew, painter. i act as my own contractor, but the main carpetner, boy that’s a challenge - always. (i think it’s that ‘good ol’ boy’ mentality, that still excists a lot in the the south. all the other subs know exactly how to do their job to code. the carpenter is the one, that has to take direction from me on how i want it done and southern men aren’t too happy with that, especially, in a male dominated business.
on a more serious note. i know a lot of investors won’t give out their handyman or contractor. they will give you everybody else’s name, but not the person, that works on the rehab beginning to end, because they don’t want him too busy to keep working on their next one. so, basically you have to find them differently. you may want to ask friends who they used and were happy with. home depot always has one of those cases where contractors can put their business cards. call some up and get bids on the job and then ask for references. things really depend on the size of the job you have. you don’t want to use a trim carpenter to do demo or framing. that would be pretty expensive. if you only have a 5k job, you may want to deal with a handyman. if it’s a 30k job you may need a contractor (or, if it’s cha, roof, rewiring and replumbing you already have most of your budget covered with big jobs and you can hire those people yourself and hire a handyman to finish the rest. it all depends.
good luck in your search
michaela