Quality workmanship

[Phil Mueller]

I’m sure there have been many rants, but it is disappointing to see the lack of quality work SOME wish to pass off on customers. We’re in the final stages of a bathroom remodel. It seems a few of the sub-contractors are totally ok with doing a mediocre/poor job and then returning to do it right (how can this be cost effective?). Fortunately, we have a good percentage held back until completion, but I think most of you here would agree this is really a sort of “you think this is good work?” wonderment.

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Just a few examples.

[Jim Koepke]

One of my bosses from a long time ago would always complain, "we don't have time to do it right, but we always find time to do it over."

Good help is hard to find. Too many workers will work harder to get out of doing work than if they just did the work in the first place.

jtk

[Kev Williams]

My dad and his dad built houses, and when we moved into THIS house back in '69, I listened to him rant on about how it's built, and it DOES have issues, door jambs not straight, tilting walls, all that stuff.. Forward to 1981 I bought my second house, a 2-story with basement, 800sq-ft each level. I bought it from the builder. And I was amazed at the high quality. I literally could not find a single thing wrong with the place. Everything dead straight, true, and level. All flooring perfect, all trim perfect. What impressed me the most were the doors. Every single door stayed exactly where you stopped it. And a gentle push would close the door, it would silently glide shut from wherever it was, and latch with a solid 'click'. And once shut, there was zero free-play, I couldn't make not one of those doors rattle from the free play, even though they didn't need to be pushed shut. I remember showing the doors to everyone! About 2 months after moving in, the builder showed up with a refund from the rent we'd paid as we moved in before closing. I told him that I'd never seen a house built this good, very impressive.

"yeah, it is built good, too bad I had to fire the guys who built it."

??? What? WHY?

"They were taking too long..."

That was 38 years ago, and it seems if anything's changed, it's been for the worse, not better

[Andrew Seemann]

I wouldn't say that everything has gotten worse. Some of the stuff they used to do back in the day was as bad or worse than anything today. My old house was built in 1909. When I redid the kitchen, I saw that the studs weren't parallel to the window frames. Originally I assumed that the house had settled, but after working a while, I realized that they had framed the wall studs out of plumb 1" over 8 feet, and shimmed the bejeezus out of the windows in order to compensate. Whenever I hear someone say "They don't build them like they used to" I tend to think "Thank God!"

[Tom Bender]

I had the excellent job of managing construction for a major manufacturer. We always used union trades. They were expensive but we almost never had quality issues. Each and every worker carried pride on his sleeve.

[Erik Loza]

Actually seems par for the course. In my experience, there is no "A-Team" when it comes to interior remodels. When we did our house house, the crews would seem baffled when I pointed out to them stuff like that. I came to assume that most clients either didn't notice or didn't care.

Erik

[Darcy Warner]

What does one expect from a remodel job completed by a bunch of different subs?

[Ronald Blue]

Andrew that's my thoughts exactly. We started out in old houses and I did a lot of the work fixing them up myself. The plaster and lathe could hide a lot of out of square out of plumb issues. So I also have said when the statement is made that "they don't make them like they used to" Thank God. Studs were all over the place. Yes they were true 2 x 4 or 2 x 4-1/8 or 2 x 4 on one end and 2 x 4-1/4 on the other. Yes they built some neat homes. As for craftsman today there are still some around. One thing to remeber you can seldom use quality and fast in the same sentence. It takes time to be picky. I'm thinking some are rolling the dice that they won't have to make it "right" because the customer doesn't know any better.

[Tom M King]

I built new houses for 33 years, starting in 1973-4. That first year, I tried to build it with a telephone. Every year after that, I used a hammer, and saw. Last time I called a subcontractor was in 1973. I quit building new houses in 2007, because it looked like all the newer builders had gotten smarter than me, and I didn't want to have a house on the market in 2008.

Since then, I've only worked on really old houses, and haven't run across one yet that didn't need some structural help.

[Andrew Seemann]

Craftsman style window and door trim and baseboards/mopboards hide misalignment and unevenness much better than ranch molding does. It had to; that horsehair plaster isn't nearly as flat and even as modern drywall. When I redid my trim in my 1909 house, I learned that basically every piece of trim/molding in the "system" hid a misalignment in at least one plane if not two.

Actually I lucked out on my old house, it hadn't had much updating over the years. Nothing worse than stuff that was questionable to start with, and then suffered 90 years of DIYers.

[Dave Anderson NH]

I just had both bathrooms redone and some other work. The small contractor did a great job and corrected some errors by the original builder as he came across them. This man takes pride in his work and I have some other work for him to do. The only difficulty working with him is getting him to schedule a date. Because of his reputation and his fair prices he is booked far in advance.

Generally I have had good luck with outside contractors for a septic system replace, a retaining wall install, a new roof,and some tree work. I ask neighbors for recommendations after inspecting the work they had done and have also asked some of my contractors for their recommendations. Networking helps a lot in getting folks who take pride in their work.