phil.p":18h8wm8j said:
The best way to find a good tradesman around here and in most other places I suspect is find a local pub, have a few beers with working people and ask them for advice. You'll be told if not whom to go to whom best to avoid.
Where I grew up, that was precisely how I found my tradesmen. Plumber, plasterer, electrician all sorted over a pint.
When I moved down south and had to resort to Yellow Pages, I was struck then by how hard it was to find someone reliable and trustworthy. The whole house (an old Victorian terrace costing more than double the nice three bed semi with gardens fron and back, a nice long drive with parking for four cars - couldn't even [ark outside my terrace but still had to buy an annual parking permit !)
First job - bathroom - was an out and out horror story. Next up was the bedroom, my thinking being if I had somewhere nice to sleep at night and a lovely bathroom to wake up to everything els could come later. Once'd I'd got the industrial grade Anaglypta off the walls and the hideous polystyrene tiles off the ceiling it was obvious even to me the whole lot was going to need plastering. I got names and numbers for a couple of guys local to the area, thinking they would almost certainly have worked on similar houses - there was around 200 of them in my street alone!
First guy was TWENTY-SIX HOURS late and when he did turn up he said he'd have to come back later as he'd 'forgotten' his notepad, pen and tape measure. Obviously that didn't bode well but I furnished him with the missing items, even though I had expected him to have a rough idea based on his supposed extensive experience. Perhaps unsurprising that I never heard from him again. Next one came better prepared and in fairness he did get back to me - about six months later.
Then I opened the door to one with a pencil behind his ear, tape measure on his belt and looking like a sudden wind would blow him off his feet. I lead him to the area requiring his undoubted skills and he took one look at it and said, "Ah yeah, done loads like this round here. Needs two and a half boards so that will be three and 'x' bags of plaster @ £x, half day's labour £300." I can't remember the exact price but even though it was more than I'd anticipated (having had a similar size job done on my previous house a year earlier) HE was what I was expecting. One glance and he knew what materials he would need and houw long it would take him to do it. He turned up when he said it would and had the job done in the time he said it would take and left without leaving half a ton of waste and a real mess behind him.
Him and his brother did pretty much the rest of the house for me, including a complete kitchen and reflooring the cellar, which had been converted to an air raid shelter. I head him on the phone to one of his contacts, an electrician he wanted to come rewire the kitchen "The client's great, we tell him what needs doing, how much it will cost and he just goes 'Okay' and pays up.' I need someone like him now I've moved back north!
