How to control the contractors

When you’re a child, many things seem clear and simple, apart from those that the adults do, but it’s their business. Later, you grow older, and you face the requirements that you’d better try and follow; otherwise… And it’s good if you learned to tell between the demands which make sense and the ones that are better be ignored. You can imagine a situation when an adult person engaged in some kind of production, completely neglects the requirements set, and then complains that there is no normal job in the country. Though, why imagine?

I face the negligence of employees at the workplace every day. Doozie craftsmen, unscrupulous suppliers, inadequate managers, scumbucket salesmen who only wish to nug you into buying their lousy goods, and then "let the will of God be done." And at the end of the day, I get to be responsible for all their screw-ups. I can only imagine the problems of people who had never faced the construction and repairs before, and they have to meet all the issues at once.

Having spent a bulk of my life and healthy neurons in search of adequate partners, I understood that it wasn’t all just yet. If the man had completed some kind of job for you successfully, you assigned him another similar one, and then another and so on, there comes the time of “boss, we’ve totally screwed up” situation.  Or simply the job is being done so bad that you want to cry. The irony is that it can be anyone from the team, or the whole team at once. Without even noticing, you trust people more and more as the time passes, and when they feel it without having the inner limits (that thing from the childhood), the shit gets real.

And how the people, who have never faced the constructions and repairs before, see all this: “we need to hire those contractors because they did repairs for a mother/ brother/ father-in-law/ Joneses from the house across the street” do we really need a foreman, they’ll short-change us anyway buying the cheaper/more expensive materials because it’s definitely much better this way.

It’s good if there is the project. Sometimes, you arrive at the already constructed house “based on the Polish project” - meaning, based on the pictures from the Internet with the uncle John as an engineer, the one who’s been pouring the foundation. And sometimes, there comes the client with his “own project” done in the free program for drawing.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a separate professional for everything! At the large construction sites, there are such things as a Supply Department, Chief Technical Inspector, Chief Architect, who may not even be the author of the project.

If your apartment is less than 50m2 or more than 160m2, it doesn’t matter. The construction stages are all the same. The principal difference is in the processes within the public space, apartment, and private house. It will suffice to talk with anyone having the experience in construction to understand whether you should get down to work on your own or hire the whole Supply Department headed by a Senior Cleaning Manager.

In the process of work, it is necessary to control every stage: before the beginning - whether there are any errors or disparities, during the process - where is the weak link, and after the end - the quality and accordance to the task.

The larger the stage, the more parts it needs to be broken into. For example, the preparation of brick walls for painting: count, order and bring the material, place everything so that it does not interfere, and not to move it anymore. All of the listed above is now replaced with a single service - an automatic machine plastering - when the guys bring everything on their own, put beacons, and while you’ve been out to grab a sandwich, they’ve already started cleaning the equipment and demand the payment now because the pump is standing on the street and there’s no need to carry any bags elsewhere.

Here, in fact, it is necessary to smear your hands a little: to take the measuring tools to check the evenness of the walls; the quality of the substance depends on the used material and the proportions. Also, you need to check whether they didn’t cover too much. Next - the putty; here, everything is the same, you only need to use the lamp of the maximum power in order not to miss a single sink or bump. This is the matter of individual approach, some say that everything under the bed or behind the wardrobe doesn’t count, others want everything to be perfect; personally, I like the second way. Carry all those check-ups after priming and the first layer of paint. This way, all the shortcomings are better visible. Also, the cleanness and tidiness are extremely important: all the garbage must be taken out, the building must have a smell of nothing else other than gypsum and paint, and everything not related to the plaster must be clean. If somewhere there are the traces of putty or paint, or paint tape, or rotten tomatoes in the corner which grew to the floor - make them fix it.

You shouldn’t resort to extremes, but a clear execution of each stage is a guarantee of a good impression from the whole process. And if you have no desire or time to do such things, you certainly need a person who will do it for you, and even if you call him Friday, unfortunately, you’ll still have to control him.