Contractor Woes: What I Learned While Doing an IKEA Kitchen

Licenses: Even though a contractor is licensed in your state, he may not have the appropriate licenses in your city/county. Ask him specificially. Probably also a good idea to call your city/county, and ask what licenses are required

Permits: Don't just ask your contractor about what permits are required for your work. Call and ask your city/county. Ask your contractor if he's ever pulled a permit in your c/c. Our contractor told us we didn't need a permit to do minor alterations to a load-bearing wall. (When we asked him how hard/expensive it would be to widen an existing window by about 6 inches or so to turn it into a passthrough to our bumpout den.) Then, when we found out we did, he told us that we'd have to pull the permit because "your county hassles contractors when they try to pull a permit." (uh, what?) Turns out, he didn't want to get the permit, because he didn't have the right licenses to get one in our county. Yes, we discovered this after the subs botched the job and our ceiling started falling. We checked his state license, but did not know about the c/c license requirements.

Subcontractor Qualifications: We made the mistake of thinking that because our GC was well-recommended, and had a lot of good references, that his subs were well-vetted and qualified. Figure out what type of jobs you'll need to have done on your project (electrical? plumbing? structural?) and make sure you confirm in writing with your GC that the subs he sends to do the work are qualified/appropriately licensed. When our ceiling fell down, the sub told us repeatedly that it wasn't a problem, that he did this sort of thing all the time-- turned out our house was quite literally falling down because he'd cut support studs without replacing them. (Again, something we should have gotten in writing, because when we went over with him how he'd handle the project, he said, "for a load bearing wall, we'd put in a temporary brace, then put in a new header to match the wider opening." What he actually did was just cut the supports and patch over it.) Later that day, we discovered that all the electrical work that sub did had to be ripped out, because his "electrician" had no concept of the codes in our county, so nothing was up to code. We were really lucky that the GC sent someone else out that day-- but it took him 4 days, including working over what was SUPPOSED to be our vacation weekend to rip it out and redo it. If we'd asked, "Exactly who is doing the electrical work, and can we see his license/certification?" it would have pre-empted this problem.