Before You Hire a Contractor

This book has a lot of common sense ideas, most easy to follow, when hiring a contractor. In some cases I could see that following all the advice might cause some contractors to run away and play with somebody who is not a pain in the ***, but the advice is to protect the homeowner and is written in such a way as to be easy to understand. The book lacks a summary of the ideas, which I condensed into 2 pages for our project

I recently had a house built (I was a first-timer with little experience in construction) and found this a very useful little book. It reinforced the importance of being thorough in checking references and provided concrete information about how to develop a construction contract. I found it extremely useful in developing my Owner's Specifications that were the foundation for my bid request and later became part of the construction contract documents. Use a highlighter to highlight the recommendations as you read this book: the useful tips can get lost in the text, much of which is devoted to consumer horror stories.

My highlighter got quite a workout during this easy to read book. Tells about disastrous contractor scenarios, and how they could have been avoided. Lots of matter of fact warnings about contracts, even gives a sample one. There is a very useful section on specifications. He stresses the importance of VERY specific specifications -- right down to how many layers of tar paper. I felt much more nervous after finishing the book because I realized the phenomenal number of decisions ahead of me, but once I started making my list with the help of the book, I felt like I had a handle on it. The list of things to specify could have been a little more complete, which is why a 4 instead of a 5 rating.