This kitchen remodeling dream of mine started back in November of 2007 and I was enthused about getting started. The first step was to hire a contractor, which sounds easy but in actuality its pure hell.
As indicated in the media, there are all types of contractors out there and my experience with the contractors in Connecticut was a journey that I will never forget. It started by me contacting an online lead service and they had three contractors call me. I met with two contractors right away and the third still hadn’t contacted me but I had a little time and waited a few weeks.
Finally, the third contractor called and I set up an appointment with them. I met with the man and may I say, he was rude, nasty, and spoke to me in a condescending manner. This was a total turn off and not only that, he was two hours late for the appointment to meet with me and gave no explanation—that alone, was a clear signal of what type of individual I was going to be dealing with. He gave me a price for remodeling my kitchen of $85,000.00 and it’s a small kitchen that only measures fourteen feet by eighteen feet, and I wasn’t looking to go top dollar-more like medium quality as we are on a budget and in this economy, one must have some will power and try to save.
The other two contractors finally followed up with their estimates, which were $66,000 and $70,000 but one of them wanted me to pay the entire fee up front—$66,000 up front, which was ridiculous. The other was very obnoxious and made me feel like I didn’t know anything about what I wanted and that made me eliminate him right away. He didn’t display this attitude in the beginning but sure made it evident on this, our second meeting. This left me with one contractor who wanted all of the money up front and I wasn’t going to do that. The result was that I eliminated him also.
PREVIOUS PAGE
