Five Rules Every Home Remodeling Contractor Should Follow

There is plenty of information out there for homeowners about contractors, but there is very little information about homeowners that home remodeling contractors should be aware of. Here are five simple rules that every home remodeling contractor should follow.

1. Try to avoid working with the disgruntled homeowners. The moment that you enter a prospective client's home and start talking to them, you need to keep one thing in mind. If these people are rude or mean to you in any way, inform them that you will not be working for them ever and they should seriously consider changing their attitude, before calling another contractor.

2. Don't waste a lot of time designing a job that you don't have. I just got through spending about five hours with a woman designing her bathroom, only to find out that a local home improvement center convinced her not to use my services and that she should use one of their contractors, even though she had no idea that their contractors are going to charge her more money.

3. Always ask the prospective client, when they're planning on starting the project. If they are not planning on starting to do any work for a few months, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have them contact you a little bit later. If they are planning on doing the work immediately and you're booked solid for the next two months, it wouldn't make any sense to go look at their project.

4. Try to get as much information about the project over the phone or through e-mail. If someone wants to build a deck on their home and you don't have enough information about the project, you could find yourself wasting a lot of time, especially if they don't have any idea how much the deck is going to cost. You could always give them a general idea over the phone or through e-mail.

5. It wouldn't be a bad idea to ask your prospective client to find out how many contractors they have contacted, before you. This one can be extremely important, because it will tell you that the homeowner is shopping the job and looking for the cheapest price.

Most homeowners are interviewing you for the job and you should take this opportunity to interview them. Make sure that these are people that you get along with and can actually work for. If you don't feel comfortable with these people, there's a good chance that you'll have problems with them in the future.