Hello and welcome! My name is Kim Hopkins. For over forty years I’ve owned an electrical contracting company in Los Angeles called The Electric Connection. In this short manual, I want to show you a simple and reliable way to find and work with the best tradespeople.
Whether you intend to do a complete kitchen remodel or just need to fix a leaky faucet, or whether you need to hire a reliable pool maintenance person or a weekly house cleaning service, this simple method should work for you.
There are very good contractors and very bad contractors. Most contractors will fall somewhere in between these two extremes. After over forty years of working with contractors, I would guess that, on a scale of 1 to 10, most contractors average a rating of about 5 or 6. I’m going to show you a way to find contractors who rate higher, with more like an 8 to 9, sometimes even a 10 rating. And in the final section, I’ll share tips for smoothing your relationships with contractors and getting high quality work for reasonable prices.
To keep things simple, I’ll refer to anyone that you hire to do any kind of work or service as a contractor. No matter what trade or service they provide, all of them are still contractors because when you hire them, they are contracting with you to do the work or service.
How to use this manual
If you’re like most people who read this, you’re probably already aware of many of the things I’ve written about here, which is great. The purpose of this manual is to help fill in any gaps.
For a complete overview, you can read this manual from beginning to end. But it’s designed to make it easy to locate specific areas where you may want more information. Below you will find a list of the subjects covered. You can select specific subjects and you will be taken to that exact spot in the manual.
Five basic actions
There are five basic actions required when hiring and then working with a contractor:
- Finding good potential contractors
- Scheduling contractors to bid the job
- Hiring the contractor
- Getting the work done
- Paying the contractor
By far the most important of these steps is finding good potential contractors. Selecting the right contractor for your project will automatically make the rest of your project run more smoothly.
This manual discusses each of these steps in sequence. The final section of this manual includes tips for working successfully with contractors.