Home Improvement

Heylel_sl said:

I was told I could get the full 10k because the repairs far exceeded my coverage. The deductible functionally no longer applies, since I am expected to cover more out of pocket than the deductible anyway. Then the adjuster calls back with this random $7850 number with no explanation, from which I'm expected to pay nearly half in cleaning fees.

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Well you are right , this isn't a accident claim with injury and this isn't a personal loss claim of property( personal ) which makes it far less likely to help. I have seen and done fire jobs where it made considerable differences however. The best you can do is rip apart the scope they have and make sure they are covering all the damages.

You can honestly skip the fireplace and shelves at this time and as ugly as it is. You can unless you have a medical condition or lack of time honestly do that yourself at anytime at a fraction of any contractor. It is super easy to build shelve units and even if you want doors, most towns have places that will build doors for you ready to hang, at a cost of around $40 a door.

If you go ahead with the removal of the wall, you should do the lights at the same time. This is due to all the drywall repairs already in progress. A contractor should mitigate the costs of fixing holes If he is already on site repairing drywall. Coating drywall only takes a minute once the initial repairs are done and sanding and such is already making the mess( and you have all the carpet up ).


As for what Jooboo said, state farm does some funny shit and tries to get away with it( hence knowing people who have sued them ), state farm as a whole does this on both property and accident/injury claims. They are not a bad insurance by any means but they do fine line people a lot. I've been out of the insurance game awhile now but Allstate used to be fucking awesome. They would just cut checks no matter what the price was pretty much. I remember fighting State Farm over a sink in a $65,000 fire job once. They put like $80 for sink on the bid. Sink the lady had was around $300. They said well you could but a sink for $80, I said ya but she doesn't want a SS sink, she had a granite one. Had to fight that stuff on almost every item in the house to get them from their 49,000 to my 65,000.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

the ac set to around 79 to 80 so it's far from running full blast. Another problem is the thermostat is a piece of shit. It will say the temperature is 84 when is actually 79.

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Hey, where I am working at now the guy left a note on it saying If I want it 75, set it to 79. I replaced it with one I had in the van and said now 75=76!
You can adjust that , but the older mercury ones are hard to calibrate without knowledge. The new digital ones you can set the swing by push of a button. Swing being how much over set ambient temp it kicks on, and how much under it kicks off or vice versa.
You said you rent though, so not sure worth replacing. If you plan to stay there a long time, you can save CONSIDERABLE money replacing it and they are about $20-60 depending on how awesome a digital you want at HD or Lowes. It would pay for itself in a month or two easy if It is the older type. You can also program them to shut off during day and kick on before you arrive back home or hold during late night. Thus the savings.

Draegan, you left out hot water heaters if electric. Those things bleed power, you can save considerable money by insulation blanket or setting down the temp. Right about TV's though. I have a older Vizio LCD that uses 226 watts on and 65 on standby. The new ones of the same size use I think 44 watts on 3 watts standby. My HDDVD boxes much use a ton because they put out more heat than a hairdryer constantly. Anything radiating heat is using some juice.

It seems to me that part of this GC vs plumber/electrician disconnect is the scope of the comparable jobs. It's hard to compare the profit margin on a multi-day, multi-thousand dollar job vs the profit margin on a 90-minute quick fix at someones home.

Yeah, your labor $ per hour over the span of a project that is going to take 50 hours to complete is going to be vastly different than the labor $ per hour for a plumber that works for 30 minutes to fix a frozen faucet. Its basically the same concept as a buying in bulk discount. That plumber is charging a fortune for the 1-hour job because it takes him time to get the part, drive to the location, and drive back to the office/home. A plumber can't fit 8 of those 1-hour jobs into a standard 8 hour workday, he's probably lucky to fit 3 or 4 of them in, tops, even if everything is planned out ahead of time in the most efficient way possible.

Now, put a plumber or electrician on a job like a new multi-unit construction where they are working solid 10-hour days, all week long, and the price per hour drops drastically.

I mean, as a general contractor, how much would you charge someone to drive all the way out to their home and install a ceiling fan? Probably a lot more than $20, even though it's only 30 minutes of work and that works out to a damn nice hourly rate, even at $20. I wouldn't get off the couch and drive anywhere to work for $20, lol.

I normally just scan this thread, so I missed this whole recent blow up or argument or whatever. I'd like to thank big Ern for defending my honor.

Olebass_sl said:

I never see what other contractors try to get on jobs, but I know I get almost every job I bid.

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That means you're probably leaving money on the table. Which is your prerogative, I suppose, but getting every job you bid isn't necessarily a good thing, from a business perspective.

joeboo_sl said:

Yeah, your labor $ per hour over the span of a project that is going to take 50 hours to complete is going to be vastly different than the labor $ per hour for a plumber that works for 30 minutes to fix a frozen faucet. Its basically the same concept as a buying in bulk discount. That plumber is charging a fortune for the 1-hour job because it takes him time to get the part, drive to the location, and drive back to the office/home. A plumber can't fit 8 of those 1-hour jobs into a standard 8 hour workday, he's probably lucky to fit 3 or 4 of them in, tops, even if everything is planned out ahead of time in the most efficient way possible.

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This guy gets it. My company doesn't fucking touch service or renovations because it's a distraction for us and not worth the time. But I always get a kick out of people complaining about a plumber or whoever having a minimum 1.5 hour service call charge out rate, or similar. Do they think the plumber doesn't get paid driving between jobs? That the van is free? What about all the other overhead of running a business? All that shit has to be covered in their billing.

That said, sure, there's a lot of dishonest assholes in the trades. But that's no different than any other industry.

joeboo_sl said:

It seems to me that part of this GC vs plumber/electrician disconnect is the scope of the comparable jobs. It's hard to compare the profit margin on a multi-day, multi-thousand dollar job vs the profit margin on a 90-minute quick fix at someones home.

Yeah, your labor $ per hour over the span of a project that is going to take 50 hours to complete is going to be vastly different than the labor $ per hour for a plumber that works for 30 minutes to fix a frozen faucet. Its basically the same concept as a buying in bulk discount. That plumber is charging a fortune for the 1-hour job because it takes him time to get the part, drive to the location, and drive back to the office/home. A plumber can't fit 8 of those 1-hour jobs into a standard 8 hour workday, he's probably lucky to fit 3 or 4 of them in, tops, even if everything is planned out ahead of time in the most efficient way possible.

Now, put a plumber or electrician on a job like a new multi-unit construction where they are working solid 10-hour days, all week long, and the price per hour drops drastically.

I mean, as a general contractor, how much would you charge someone to drive all the way out to their home and install a ceiling fan? Probably a lot more than $20, even though it's only 30 minutes of work and that works out to a damn nice hourly rate, even at $20. I wouldn't get off the couch and drive anywhere to work for $20, lol.

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No It has to do with he is not relating to the fact I am there and know what was and wasn't done when these people was ripped off.

I charge $50 for ceiling fans IF I am already on job. That is due to the big 3 makers of them changing the install procedure for them every damn year. The new thing is rubber inserts at every screw which is annoying as shit to install but makes a quiet ass powerful fan at the end. If that is all I am doing it is $60 if local. That being said I don't get many random , you don't know me but I need a fan installed calls. Almost all my work is word of mouth and involves far more than just a fan or storm door or random mini project calls. My average job is around $3000 of work. That bathroom I posted pictures of earlier was $18,000 for my part and I didn't supply the tile, granite or hardwood. That sounds like a lot and a person could easily say I ripped them off just based on price, but it was a 3 month job, and I came in $12,000 less than the other bidder. Course I gutted a 27x16 foot area and installed all new electric/plumbing, new drywall, hardwood, tile, shower, 7.5 ft custom built vanity, 4 ft makeup station, upper cabinets, 2 walk in closets with custom built shelving in them, crown mold, painting , new attic insulation, 10 new light fixtures , 6 doors and new base, 5x5 heavy glass door shower and other shit.

All the examples I've given wasn't based on it took a hour to do this, why is $150 so high, it was it took a hour to do this, why did they charge $400 for it.
I mean I can get Buck here in town to come out and do a service change from 100a to 200a and run all new wiring for code on a kitchen for $2400. So why the fuck would someone charge $1100 or whatever it was to put in a few can lights. Seriously.
That is why I keep arguing over it, someone can try to justify that all day long. I'm going to call them a over charging asshole.

Alternately, as someone mentioned earlier, you might be selling yourself short on the value of your services. If your bid was 40% lower than the next lowest bid, you are working for crazy cheap...

Olebass_sl said:

That sounds like a lot and a person could easily say I ripped them off just based on price, but it was a 3 month job, and I came in $12,000 less than the other bidder.

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Maybe the other guy was way high, but have you considered that you're working for too little? That's a lot of money to be leaving on the table.

Second bid came in at $7370 with pretty much our whole wishlist, carpet included. Only thing we'd provide is the materials for the tile. His cost for tile was a little higher, but everything else was lower. I think the wall removal, new fireplace, drywall repair, ceiling matching AND recessed lights came to a total of $5k, materials included. I'm willing to call that pretty damn good.

Now if I can just get State Farm to pay out, we'll be in business. Out of curiosity, how often do you guys haggle with homeowners over a price? I'm not trying to drive the price down, but if insurance pays out less than I expect I may have to.

Heylel_sl said:

Second bid came in at $7370 with pretty much our whole wishlist, carpet included. Only thing we'd provide is the materials for the tile. His cost for tile was a little higher, but everything else was lower. I think the wall removal, new fireplace, drywall repair, ceiling matching AND recessed lights came to a total of $5k, materials included. I'm willing to call that pretty damn good.

Now if I can just get State Farm to pay out, we'll be in business. Out of curiosity, how often do you guys haggle with homeowners over a price? I'm not trying to drive the price down, but if insurance pays out less than I expect I may have to.

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That sounds more like it. While Lowes and HD run sales on tile and I use the fuck out of % off coupons to save money, the cheapest place for tile is usually surplus stores. Bought some awesome marbled white 12x12 from Home Surplus earlier this year for $.44 a tile.

I have been raising my prices slowly Eomer lately to account for gas prices, increase cost of most materials and whatnot and that a US dollar now is about worth what 40 cents was 6 years ago. When a small bottle of mayo costs $4 damn dollars and a loaf of bread $3 that is what I base a dollars worth on. If they do this $15 minimal wage shit, prices will likely double or triple for all work like this from everyone. Not because any contractor or his employees make min wage, but because everything will cost even more than it does now.

As far as the bid, even mine was over her budget, but she had a unrealistic budget of 20k for everything. If mine was any higher she would not have done it. Also she did not like the other guy, she said he pulled up in a sports car, was not doing the work himself, and just came up with random numbers in his bid. I had mine itemized over 5 pages of work for everything. I'm sure he planned to just call random contractors to do the work and had a 20-30% markup for his pockets.
I only use O&P on insurance jobs.

Yeah, this bid is a lot more reasonable. There is no painting involved except the steps, which could be tough so I don't mind paying for. We can do the rest of the walls ourselves, honestly. That's the one thing left out of this estimate relative to the other one.

As for tile, we found some we liked pretty well at about $2/sqft at a flooring place. Given that we're only talking ~45 square feet, it didn't seem like it would get very expensive for us to provide materials.

Olebass_sl said:

If they do this $15 minimal wage shit, prices will likely double or triple for all work like this from everyone. Not because any contractor or his employees make min wage, but because everything will cost even more than it does now.

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Here we go!

Eomer_sl said:

Here we go!

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Yes, wrong thread. It does impact this shit though and it is already bad enough. Shit is already almost twice in most cases as high was it was just 6 years back. America will be the new Zimbabwe where 1 billion US Dollars for a loft of bread!
Want some can lights installed? That'll be 100 grand sir. The End is nigh. They took our jobs. Dink er derr Dink err derr.

No seriously I don't even want to discuss that tonight. I feel bad enough that I think either I have misunderstood Err or he has misunderstood me. I got enough drama in my life. I think we all need a bro hug.

I'll give you a bro hug once my roof is complete

Did you ever post the pictures or info on it? If you did I overlooked it and will go back and find it.

Not much to say at this point. It's got two layers over the original '78 roof and that shit all needs to come off and be replaced. I do need to get some pics up for some advice - we knew the roof needed replacing when we bought the place, no biggie. We didn't know they'd taken some slightly used tiles to cover up and hide some holes (2) into the walls of the house. I don't even know where to start on fixing that shit. Stuck on some roof repair tape in the meantime. Anywho, planning to do this towards the end of summer, so that's when I'll finish cramming my youtube videos and shit to figure out how to replace a roof and see if ya'll can help with any questions. I know it's going to suck and I'll hate life when doing it, yadda yadda, but I'm determined to do this on my own.

Soffits could use repairs here and there too - really should probably just do the whole house, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

Actually, now that I think on it I should go youtube this weekend on how to caulk like a pro. Need to strip and replace some in my bathroom and, I did my sister's a few years back, shit didn't last two years, and looked like it was applied by Michael J Fox. Can't have that quality of work in my own home haha!

OneofOne_sl said:

Not much to say at this point. It's got two layers over the original '78 roof and that shit all needs to come off and be replaced. I do need to get some pics up for some advice - we knew the roof needed replacing when we bought the place, no biggie. We didn't know they'd taken some slightly used tiles to cover up and hide some holes (2) into the walls of the house. I don't even know where to start on fixing that shit. Stuck on some roof repair tape in the meantime. Anywho, planning to do this towards the end of summer, so that's when I'll finish cramming my youtube videos and shit to figure out how to replace a roof and see if ya'll can help with any questions. I know it's going to suck and I'll hate life when doing it, yadda yadda, but I'm determined to do this on my own.

Soffits could use repairs here and there too - really should probably just do the whole house, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

Actually, now that I think on it I should go youtube this weekend on how to caulk like a pro. Need to strip and replace some in my bathroom and, I did my sister's a few years back, shit didn't last two years, and looked like it was applied by Michael J Fox. Can't have that quality of work in my own home haha!

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GAF and Certainteed have field shingle applicators manuals that go over everything in detail from how to measure roof, properly nail(extremely fucking important on architectural shingles), how to snap line, and a lot of different flashing details. If you PM me your address I'll mail you one. I got a bunch of them laying around here collecting dust. Also post some pics of the roof and we can advise further from there.

Speaking of roofs, a friend of my dad who owned a roofing company died at work yesterday evening. I don't know the details, only what was shared with me. Something about him leaning out a window and some kind of machine crushed his head. Dad said it was like a little backhoe. I guess he might have had some kind of safety turned off.

Fucking terrible, sorry to hear man. Safety is serious shit in construction. That's one of my worst nightmares, is one of my workers getting killed.

Roofing would totally suck. I bid that shit out when I remodeled my house. Got bids from 6,000-17,000, all for roughly the same product (GAF lifetime and 10ish years labor warranty). I had heard good things about the lowest bid, so I went with it. Those poor bastards ripped a cedar shingle roof off of a 1400sq ft house, breezeway, and 2 car garage, replaced 5 sheets, cut in a ridge vent, and did a really nice job for $6100. Luckily it is just a 2 tiered rancher so nothing fancy, but my god. That is a shit ton of work for 6k (materials included).