GT wrote: ↑Sun Apr 17, 2022 8:39 am
How did you select your contractors - if you don't mind me asking...
I have used Angie's list in the past but there have been changes to the website.
Wife uses next door app to seek feedback on general contractors now
Don't mind at all.
For driveway and tree work I asked on Facebook for recommendations for those type people. Then it became a process of them coming here, giving me a price, and me leaning mostly towards lowest price but also how much I liked the contractor.
I got quotes from five different people for the driveway work. I think I got quotes from about 10 for the tree work.
For all the regrading work and the stump removal ... that came from asking my backdoor neighbor for a recommendation for who to do regrading work. I contacted his recommendation that night about 9:45 PM on a Monday night and was shocked when he responded about 15 minutes later, around 10 PM. That was impressive.
We set up an appointment for the following Thursday. During that visit we expanded the work to taking care of all the stumps removals as he explained that since he was going to already be having his equipment on my property to do the regrading he could offer me a better price on the stump removals than if that was a separate job, requiring him to bring his equipment just to do that work.
I liked him a lot. He was the opposite of pushy, trying to convince me that I needed to do this and that. Instead, he kept prefacing everything he was recommending to do with...."I'm not saying you need to do this but..."
The driveway and tree work is both straightforward and well defined. So that was like a commodity, easy to get the quotes from many contractor since they would all be doing the exact same work.
However, in this case of this regrading and stump removal .... and all else he is doing to do...While it is now well defined for what he is going to do ... another contractor(s) would probably make different recommendations. Which would then make it difficult to compare their different estimates since they'd not really be doing the exact same work.
So I decided that since I liked and trusted this contractor so much that I'd just get an estimate from him.
Generally, I get multiple bids for all work. But, in this case, I'm feeling fine just going with him.
Finally, I have a "house committee" of about 16 people. These are friends who have way, way, way more experience than me with this physical world related to all things house. One person was the building inspector of my town for 30 years. Others would do almost all the work themselves that I'm hiring people to do. It was a recognition that I'm lacking in knowledge in this area and I had so many people willing to help me through the process. So their involvement has ranged from coming on my property to see all or Facebook messages or text messages or phone calls or email. They have been quite invaluable to me in helping me understand all of this and to end up making confident decisions.