Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Good Thing #10: Having the Right People

When you own your own home, there are some people you have in your life for a brief time, but they can make an impact on it every day. Flip a light switch, turn on a faucet, open a window... unless you're a do-it-yourself-er you're interacting with the work of an electrician, plumber or carpenter. If they've done their jobs right these simple acts are something you don't notice. If not, your every day is annoying. If these jobs are done badly enough it can actually be damaging or dangerous.

It seems like in this day and age, with online reviews and everything that it would be easy to find the right people. It's way more of a challenge than it should be. There are just too many people who are incompetent, if not downright dishonest. We got lucky. Our plumber is a childhood chum who takes great pride in his work. He introduced us to a good carpenter. We didn't have such good luck with electricians. The first one did a few things badly, left stuff unfinished and never returned our calls afterwards. The second was decent, to a point, but then left a job unfinished and also stopped returning our calls. I don't think we're that hard to get along with. Word has it that for electricians, the money is in wiring up whole houses so it can be a problem finding one to do small jobs. Still, that's no excuse for being unprofessional. The third electrician was a lot more expensive than the first two, but she did good work showed up when she said she was going to. We'll be having her back to do more work.

That's just it. We may not have many "major" jobs to do, but now that we've found the right people we'll stick with them for as long as we live in the area. Decades of small jobs add up!

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