Independent Contractor

Recommendations and reviews from 1 person

• WhoDoYou Review from November 23, 2011
  

  Anonymous We had a mixed experience with building our garden exterior wall. On one hand the end result is very much to our satisfaction, which one might argue is the most important part. On the other hand getting there took was anything but a smooth ride. It took much longer than expected and the cost of the surprises that came along the way amounted to a significant amount. We contracted Jishay to demolish our front garden exterior wall and replace it by a new stone wall. Jishay is basically the contractor (‘Kablan’) that brings the various resources to get the job node, while doing some of the work himself as well. We all know that contractors are never on time and work gets delayed for a million and one reasons. However we felt that a contained job as ours should have been much more close to schedule than it was. Also the hidden costs that came up along the way were quite high compared to the overall cost. It is understandable that ‘things happen’ however we felt that Jishay lacked experience to be able to predict some of them. I do believe that a good contractor could have predicted 80% of the issues we had in advance. I believe in full disclosure and hate the salami approach. Would Jishay had set down with us and list all the bad things that could happen, we could have included it in our decision making process. It is very hard to do so when you are standing in front of a half done project. At the same time, we felt that he wasn’t trying to rip is off and always kept honest, which does count for a lot. If you do consider contracting him (and this might be seen as general advice for these types of projects) make sure you review and cover all the following: • Cost of building the wall, including acceptable tolerance for surprises. • Cost of wall cover stone including what called ‘copping’. • Cost of potential street pavement replacement. • Cost of gets and other metal work that is done by other people. This is hard to finalize as they only come in measure once the wall is standing. • Electrical work to power automated gets, buzzers, intercom and light. If reusing existing wiring, make sure it all works before embarking on the project and review it with the contractor. • Door buzzer positioning. Make sure the location on the wall is clearly defined before the wall is built. You don’t want to curve into the wall later on. Make sure which buzzer or intercom you are using so you also know the required dept. • Discuss the details related to mailbox location and size, light location and size, name plate and any other additions that are not “the wall” per se. • Many places have strict rules related to work around public domain. Dumpsters can be placed only for certain durations, piles of rubble have to be cleaned within certain time, etc. Find out in advance what your township rules are, discuss it with the contractor and save yourself some headache form unfriendly neighbors.

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