Hiring Contractors Without Going Through Hell: How to Find, Hire, Supervise, and Pay Professional Help

by Ellis Levinson

Book Overview

Every homeowner has a horror story about remodeling. Here's how to avoid such domestic disasters. This practical guide focuses specifically on issues that relate to hiring and managing home repair... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802773818
• ISBN13: 9780802773814
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Walker Books
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Brief and to the point - worth it

This book is an easy read and effective resource. The chapters on the contract, financing, and scams are well worth it. Helpful examples of forms in the Appendix (print is a bit small in the paperbook version). Use this along with What the experts don't tell you about building or renovating your home (may be reissued in 2008 with a new title).

Good starting point

I have found this book to be very enlightening. I am in the process of hiring a contractor, and this book opened my eyes to several steps that I need to take in order to protect myself and my investment. In particular, I found the sections on writing the contract and setting up the payment schedules to be helpful. There are a couple of improvements that could be made to this book to make it even more helpful. It should include more examples of contracts. The one full contract example the book includes is reduced to unreadable text size in order to save print, which makes it nearly useless as an example. Since the book was written pre-Web, it would benefit from being revised to include information on helpful websites. For example, the book provides the addresses and phone numbers of licensing bureaus for each state, but it would be nice to have a website address, too.All in all, this is a good starter book and has the potential to save you far more than its cost in troubles and headaches.