Anxiety/Stress in getting the repairs done -

[rkser]

When getting repairs done around the house, I get stressed, anxious about being taken advantage off or getting charged a high amount.

This involves - Roof repairs for leaks, Patio installed, Car repairs, home appliance repairs, getting work around the house done etc..

I am pushing 70 & myself never wanted to earlier or am hardly able to now work around the house.
I have experienced the costs of Handy Men/Odd jobs type work over time go up a lot.

Earlier in the days Money was a concern for us, but in retirement now it is necessarily not.

But the same stress/anxiety persists.

 

[COcheesehead]

Get a quote and have them note “not to exceed” on it.

 

[pb4uski]

The best that you can do is to shop around and get numerous quotes and then decide whether you are willing to pay the price, try to do-it-yourself or defer the item in question.

We "need" to upgrade the insulation in the attic since it has settled over the 19 years since the house was built. I could defer it. I could do it myself but I don't want to. I have one quote that I think is reasonable but will get one or two others and then pull the trigger.

No need to be anxious or stress.

 

[Spock]

Well... you can stress about being over charged.
Or. In my case living in a town of about 22,000, we can't get contractors to even return a phone call to get a bid. Even indoor projects that contractors usually schedule for over winter.
If they answer the phone, they get the job.

 

[engineernerd]

Yeah, I've thought about that a bit. Being easily able to afford being overcharged, but fearing it anyway.

I think it's mainly fear of having my faith in humanity challenged. Of having that unpleasant feeling you get when you realize someone thought of you as a chump, instead of a fellow human being worthy of decent treatment.

That plus the vestiges of a lifelong habit of pride in frugality

 

[rkser]

Roof Leaks are the worst, because of the urgency involved & one does not have any clue what is happening up there.

It is a 26 yr old house in a established
neighborhood, the rather regular roof repair leak bills ($5-6k) are not large enough to fight the home insurance in Florida and not non consequential either.

 

[pb4uski]

IMO, if one is having "rather regular" $5-6k roof repair leak bills on a 26 year old house... that's your sign... that it is time to consider replacing your roof.

 

[Spock]

Roof Leaks are the worst, because of the urgency involved & one does not have any clue what is happening up there.

It is a 26 yr old house in a established
neighborhood, the rather regular roof repair leak bills ($5-6k) are not large enough to fight the home insurance in Florida and not non consequential either.

I dunno what roofs cost in FL. Last spring I had a new roof put on (strip off old shingles down to the plywood, replace turbine vents, install new underlayment and shingles) for $11K.

 

[surprising]

Get multiple bids. Recently had a water heater replaced. One bid was $1600, another was $2000, and the third was $3000. I laughed when the $3000 bid guy told me his bid. Water heater itself was ~$700, so the guy who did it for the lowest bid $1600, which took an hour, still got paid $900 in labor, which boggles my mind.

I'm still young and do a lot of repairs myself, so I really get upset when I hear some of the bids for simple things. I'll often imagine what I would charge for some things and it's way less than what the going rate appears to be.

 

[Koolau]

Off-Topic but suggested by the topic:

Young folks (teens thinking about c@reers) should read this thread. Who needs college when there is a world of steady w*rk out there for anyone willing to learn handy-man skills and accumulate a trunk full of tools?

Back on topic:

We have been blessed to find our handy-man help at church. There are no guarantees in this life, but hiring people you worship with every Sunday seems to give an edge in finding good people to help us with what ever kind of repairs, maintenance and upgrades our place needs. YMMV

 

[rkser]

It is a Tile Roof & I would imagine around $60 - 70k would be the cost.

I guess I may start to get estimates for the replacement.

 

[Koolau]

It is a Tile Roof & I would imagine around $60 - 70k would be the cost.

I guess I may start to get estimates for the replacement.

I have one word for you Benjamin (I mean rkser). "Steel."

 

[EastWest Gal]

Get multiple bids. Recently had a water heater replaced. One bid was $1600, another was $2000, and the third was $3000. I laughed when the $3000 bid guy told me his bid. Water heater itself was ~$700, so the guy who did it for the lowest bid $1600, which took an hour, still got paid $900 in labor, which boggles my mind.

I'm still young and do a lot of repairs myself, so I really get upset when I hear some of the bids for simple things. I'll often imagine what I would charge for some things and it's way less than what the going rate appears to be.

Did he remove the old water heater and take it away for you? Did the cost of the water heater include delivery? There is probably more to that $900 than just labor. Your bid did include their cost of transporting the old water heater out of the house to the landfill or recycling center.

 

[pb4uski]

It is a Tile Roof & I would imagine around $60 - 70k would be the cost.

I guess I may start to get estimates for the replacement.

Yeah, tile roofs are a lot of maintenance as they get older.

My aunt's neighborhood once mandated tile roofs but they they conceded to allow metal roofs that look like tile and so that is what she did when they replaced their roof. Would that be an option for you or is it only tile?

 

[surprising]

Did he remove the old water heater and take it away for you? Did the cost of the water heater include delivery? There is probably more to that $900 than just labor. Your bid did include their cost of transporting the old water heater out of the house to the landfill or recycling center.

Of course. There's also gas, license costs, etc. Even if all that cost $200, he's still made $700 for an hour of work (plus transportation). Also what about the $3000 bid (and I see their trucks everywhere so they are used a lot)? It would've been $3000-$700-$200 = $2100 profit. Obviously they charge that much because they can get it, which is just sad that people are paying that much.

 

[engineernerd]

Did he remove the old water heater and take it away for you? Did the cost of the water heater include delivery? There is probably more to that $900 than just labor. Your bid did include their cost of transporting the old water heater out of the house to the landfill or recycling center.

We've replaced water heaters ourselves at both our homes, and all we had to do was call our regular garbage service and arrange a bulk-item pickup. Free in one location, modest charge in the other. Any plumber/handyman who means well would offer to remove the old one but would also suggest we could save $$ by going through our own garbage company.

 

[Spock]

It is a Tile Roof & I would imagine around $60 - 70k would be the cost.

I guess I may start to get estimates for the replacement.

That must include replacing all the tiles
Tiles themselves are usually warrantied for 50 years. In the desert SW, a tile roof is "replaced" by first shifting/restacking several rows of tiles up or down, replacing the underlayment (tar paper) and repairing any plywood, then shifting the tiles back and repeating with the next several rows. Labor intensive, but I can't see it taking 60K... unless you have a LOT of sq ft.

 

[Koolau]

Of course. There's also gas, license costs, etc. Even if all that cost $200, he's still made $700 for an hour of work (plus transportation). Also what about the $3000 bid (and I see their trucks everywhere so they are used a lot)? It would've been $3000-$700-$200 = $2100 profit. Obviously they charge that much because they can get it, which is just sad that people are paying that much.

Not to put too fine a point on the subject, but an hour (on site) j*b is likely more like 2 or even 3 hours by the time all travel and preparation is accounted for. (Pick up? Disposal? Travel. Etc.). Still seems outrageous price. But no installer puts in 8 water heaters in an 8 hour shift. Maybe 3. Maybe 4?

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

We've replaced water heaters ourselves at both our homes, and all we had to do was call our regular garbage service and arrange a bulk-item pickup. Free in one location, modest charge in the other. Any plumber/handyman who means well would offer to remove the old one but would also suggest we could save $$ by going through our own garbage company.

Around here people just post it on the local Nextdoor or Facebook pages and someone will come and pick it up free. There are also a couple of guys that will post their monthly pick up schedule for the area and they'll take broken appliances BBQ's and pretty much anything they can turn into cash. They also work as trash haulers and charge people to take their trash to the dump and I'm sure a lot of it gets recycled or resold so they make money that way as well.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

How does anyone get multiple contractors to place a competitive bid on small household repairs ?

 

[jollystomper]

Our approach is twofold: (a) get multiple references, and ignore the "but if you sign this RIGHT NOW we will throw in a discount that will not be available after today" , and (b) network and find out from friends, neighbors, and and others in the community who the good/reasonable contractors are around.

We are also fortunate to have several realtors, contractors, and tradespeople as close friends. The realtors - who also buy and renovate homes in adding to selling them - know the good and honest folks. The tradespeople we work with are are good and honest. At this point is it less about the expense and more about the quality and longevity of the repair. I want these folks to make a profit off of me, because they have shown their character in the quality of their work and their followup for that work.

 

[Sorcerer]

Of course. There's also gas, license costs, etc. Even if all that cost $200, he's still made $700 for an hour of work (plus transportation). Also what about the $3000 bid (and I see their trucks everywhere so they are used a lot)? It would've been $3000-$700-$200 = $2100 profit. Obviously they charge that much because they can get it, which is just sad that people are paying that much.

You're paying for more than what you listed. They have overhead, work vehicle, tools...not to mention, their expertise.

You probably could have done it yourself. But, you would have spent 6 hours+. There would have been fittings you forgot to get so multiple trips to the store. You would have to watch 4 different YouTube videos on best practices. What takes you all day can take a pro 1 hour. That's what you're really paying for.

I'm only saying all of this from experience. I do almost everything myself. But I'm not going to pretend it doesn't take me 4x or more as long than it would a pro.

 

[TripleLindy]

How does anyone get multiple contractors to place a competitive bid on small household repairs ?

This is my challenge. And I don’t even care about getting multiple bids - I just want a reasonable quote. I recently had electricians give me a price to install a whole house surge protector. Not only was everyone way overcharging for a device I could buy for hundreds less on Amazon, they were quoting anywhere from $1k to $3k for installation, which was a max of 2 hours work.

 

[finnski1]

Half the reason I do serious DIY work is getting competent and honest repair people. It's difficult to even get anybody for most repairs and impossible for small jobs. Plumbers around here have crazy pricing. I also think I may even do better work than many "professionals" because I am very picky about the results and aesthetics of the work being done.
For example, I just installed a new whole house water filtration system. The only quote I bothered getting was about 2.5x the cost of the parts. I took my time along with DW and we did it over the course of 2 days. I redid some of the plumbing layouts because some of the piping was not perfectly plumb and level. I have had jobs done by pros that were not quite plumb, and level and my OCD was pissed off by that. I am ok getting mad at myself if slightly off and I will almost always fix it whereas others will just leave it and I don't like to harbor ill feelings or regret for hiring it out and paying a lot more. I also, many times add additional items that were not included from the local pro. For example, I added three shut off valves in the water filtration job so that I can isolate and work on the 2 tank filters without shutting the whole house down. Being retired and always looking for projects to fill my time, I dont care if it takes 3 times as long.

 

[rk911]

We've been blessed to have a found a great person for the kind of work the OP wrote about. He was refered to us by our electrician 20-yrs ago. We've hired him steadily over the past 20-years to remodel our home. Prior to finding Mike we used the original Angie's List and had mixed results. I would value referals from friends, relatives, neighbors and other contractors used in the past over Thumbtack or Angie.