Intuition - Your Best Tool When Selecting a Home Improvement Contractor

In my fifteen plus years in the construction trade I have often thought about how little influence a flashy portfolio or reference list has. My “picture book” was rarely even opened and as far as reference lists, unless you know the previous customer personally, or have seen the work with your own eyes, these can be smoke screens at best. A slick salesman once told me, “You can baffle them with BS if you’re not on a level playing field.” That being said, I’ve put together a few ideas that may help “level said playing field” when picking a home improvement contractor.

First and foremost, trust your intuition. Unless you are known in your sewing circle as the “one with too much faith in humanity” trust your judgment of character and intuition as your best decision making skills. Be prepared to gauge a reaction and be attentive to how things are said as much as what is said. Anyone really can be read like a book if you can just turn the pages. Approach is similarly to any relationship, professional or otherwise. Pay attention to their ability to communicate and convey their vision. Have a few questions ready about design issues or problem areas. Open a dialogue to get some insight on their willingness to work with you as a team while still realizing respectively that he/she is the professional. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a few parameter related questions ready i.e. square footage, lineal footage, material lists, etc., to have an idea if they can calculate efficiently and accurately.

Okay now, bear with me on this next one folks, there is something to be said about the psychology of the third party observer. A second set of eyes to watch from the “outside in,” someone who’s judgment you trust, anyone from your spouse to your neighbor, to simply gauge reactions to questions or even take a quick peak at the contractors work truck and tools, while you discuss specifics indoors. “A busy man’s space may be cluttered but a lazy man’s space if filthy.”

There are obviously textbook more typical steps to this type of decision making, especially in the industry of home improvement contractors. The competition may appear identical right down to the price per square foot. So, I believe a more intuition-based approach is as valuable as anything in this day and age. This being said, I hope I have left you today with at least a few new tools to ease the pain of your home improvement decisions.