irvinehomeowner
Well-known member
In our various homes we've always wanted to redo bathrooms, kitchens, flooring and paint.
For flooring and paint, it's pretty easy to get referrals and give them... I've used a few people and they have consistently given me good results and I refer them out freely. But for bathrooms and kitchens... it seems really hard to get a good... or even *give* a good referral. The really good ones are expensive or take a long time (since they are busy) and the mediocre ones you really don't want to refer to others (and possibly your friends don't want to refer them to you).
We redid our kitchen in one of our homes once and while the work turned out great... the process was a nightmare. Contractor took forever on some things and I can admit there were others where we kept changing what we wanted and that irritated the contractor. In the end, we got a nice kitchen but we don't think we would refer them to friends/family just because they took so long to finish our project.
With bathrooms, I can't seem to get a good referrals. I've gotten quotes from several Yelp ones and they were hit and miss. Some quotes varied by thousands and others were sketchy. A friend of ours had several of his bathrooms redone but by 2 different people and he really doesn't recommend either of them. The one who he recommended for his kitchen ghosted us after we got a bid. We even have a friend who is a contractor but he's not close by and always seems too busy to bid out a quote for us.
Maybe it's just me but I've never really seen anyone rave about any great contractors here on TI (except maybe some landscaping companies). Even gardeners or housekeepers referrals seem to be horded. Solar referrals seem to be in abundance though.
If a contractor does a decent job, I'll Yelp review them but I wouldn't recommend them to friends/family so maybe that's why it's harder to give/get referrals from people you know rather than strangers on the Internet.
For flooring and paint, it's pretty easy to get referrals and give them... I've used a few people and they have consistently given me good results and I refer them out freely. But for bathrooms and kitchens... it seems really hard to get a good... or even *give* a good referral. The really good ones are expensive or take a long time (since they are busy) and the mediocre ones you really don't want to refer to others (and possibly your friends don't want to refer them to you).
We redid our kitchen in one of our homes once and while the work turned out great... the process was a nightmare. Contractor took forever on some things and I can admit there were others where we kept changing what we wanted and that irritated the contractor. In the end, we got a nice kitchen but we don't think we would refer them to friends/family just because they took so long to finish our project.
With bathrooms, I can't seem to get a good referrals. I've gotten quotes from several Yelp ones and they were hit and miss. Some quotes varied by thousands and others were sketchy. A friend of ours had several of his bathrooms redone but by 2 different people and he really doesn't recommend either of them. The one who he recommended for his kitchen ghosted us after we got a bid. We even have a friend who is a contractor but he's not close by and always seems too busy to bid out a quote for us.
Maybe it's just me but I've never really seen anyone rave about any great contractors here on TI (except maybe some landscaping companies). Even gardeners or housekeepers referrals seem to be horded. Solar referrals seem to be in abundance though.
If a contractor does a decent job, I'll Yelp review them but I wouldn't recommend them to friends/family so maybe that's why it's harder to give/get referrals from people you know rather than strangers on the Internet.
