For some reason that I cannot understand, most of the people I have met or taught in the past two decades (and we are talking about literally hundreds of thousands of people) think that commercial real estate works just like residential real estate, except that the dollars involved are much larger, and that the potential risks and problems are also much larger.
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The contract should mention two different kinds of warranties. One is a warranty on workmanship. This means the workmanship of the contractor, their employees, and subcontractors. States, and sometimes even municipalities, specify a minimum warranty period of, let’s just say, three years.
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Many contractors and repair people say that the products that a manufacturer supplies to home centers tend to be of lower or, if not lower, then different, quality than the products the same manufacturer provides to wholesale suppliers, even if they are the same model.
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Anything you want should mean just that. It shouldn’t mean anything that the supplier has in stock, no matter how much it costs.
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The attitude of my longtime plumber, Marcel Paillard, is more what you should be looking for in any contractor. We wanted to replace a very ugly bathroom vanity with a pedestal sink that was more in keeping with the age of the house. We supplied the sink.
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Contractors say no for three reasons. The first is that they don’t want to be bothered. The second is that they don’t know the answer but have what seems to be a good reason not to spend time tracking it down, because it might mean a delay in getting your job done and moving on to the next one. The third is that they are so set in their ways [...]
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At the start of our first renovation almost 25 years ago, I asked the contractor for plaster walls and ceilings in the second-floor bathroom he would be renovating.
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