The Hunt For A Renovation Contractor

Published by simon on December 14, 2007

A few weeks ago, we decided to do some renovate our front gate and brickwall fence, after more than 8 years of putting it off. We estimated it to be about RM5,000 judging from some of the works done by our neighbours.

Here’s an interesting fact - our house is probably the ONLY house left in the whole housing estate that has NOT been renovated - front or back. I have to admit - it’s really for friends to find our place… “Easy to find one, just look for the only house that looks ORIGINAL…!”

So we started to look for a renovation contractor. Obviously we aren’t going to get any fly-by-night con job or any of those that drop their namecards in your mailbox. We decided to get quotations only from contractors that were highly recommended by friends.

Contractor #1: This was a friend of my sub-contractor. Used to be a big-time contractor, now doing housing renovation. Price was okay, but my wife says he looks very blur. Looks like he just woke up from sleep - all the time.

Contractor #2: This guy did my neighbour’s renovation last month. Gave me a handwritten quotation. Can’t read his bleeding handwriting, except the grand total.

Contractor #3: My friend’s brother-in-law. Took 3 hours to find my house - got lost, had an accident, got lost again… but gave a good quote, but didn’t get the job. As a consolation, managed to get to a small tiling job from John who was at my house when he came.

Contractor #4: This one was my friend’s church member. Apparently he heard i was working in property development, and the first thing he said when he reached my house was, “you interested in BUYING THIS PIECE OF LAND OR NOT? This DATO’ FRIEND of mine want to sell, CAN DO RESORT OR BUNGALOW PROJECT…” while showing me all these plans and land titles. Only after 10 minutes that i managed to get to talk about my renovation. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t really interested in doing the job, saying, “you all got another contractor to do the job or not?”

Contractor #5:This guy is doing a major job for my pal in PJ, and we’ve seen a lot of his work, too. Gave us the best quote so far.

Contractor #6: Two old men who’s doing some work for my brother-in-law. Has to come during the day to see my house because they “can’t see well in the evening” (what was that again?).Took dozens of photos with their digital camera (probably because of POOR MEMORY due to OLD AGE…). Everyone else takes one or two days to give me a quote, these uncles took more than a week. Plus they hod the record for the HIGHEST PRICE of the bunch. Why, need to add to the retirement fund izzit, uncle?

Anyway, we’ve had enough of quotations and are probably going with No. #5…

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