A Tale Of Two Contractors (How Not To Do Business vs. How To Do Business Correctly)

Last week, I told y’all about a chance meeting I had in the Home Depot parking lot with a man who was the project manager on our garage-to-studio conversion several years ago. It just so happens that he is now working for one of the contractors I called about the addition we’re wanting to build on the back of our house. Knowing that he would once again be the project manager on our addition if I went with that company made me feel like it was meant to be!

But right after I hit “publish” on that post (which you can read here if you missed it), I got a call from a different contractor (I had called and left messages with three different contractors) who set up a meeting with me for last Friday. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to meet with both of them. The more info, the better, right? And it’s always better to get estimates from two or three before making a decision.

Well, I wish I hadn’t scheduled that first meeting at all. I was going into this meeting totally blind. Of course, I’ve worked with contractors before, but I’ve never had to work with the City of Waco to pull permits to tear down part of an existing building and then to build a 1000-square-foot addition onto a house before. I’ve never had to hire an engineer or an architect or a draftsperson or a designer before so that they can do all of the official drawings required by the city in order to add on 1000 square feet to a house before. All of this is brand new to me.

While I’ve got plenty of DIY experience and I’ve worked with contractors to modify the existing rooms of the house, adding on 1000 square feet of living space to an existing house is a completely different animal. Most homeowners (including myself) wouldn’t know the first thing to do, which is why we hire contractors to take care of the entire process, right?

The contractor is the one who explains to the engineer what kind of foundation they need built, and the engineer designs it to the right specifications. The contractor is the one who works with the permit office to make sure all of the proper plans are on file, and he’s the one who pulls the permits and works with the inspectors to make sure everything is just right. The contractor is the one who knows and understands the step-by-step process to get from concept to completion.

That’s the experience and expertise that you’re paying for when you hire a contractor (or any other professional), and you expect them to do their job without heaping loads and loads of extraneous stress and problems onto your shoulders before and during the project. (Yes, additions are inherently stressful for homeowners, but I think you understand what I mean.)

Well, that is not at all the vibe I got from the first contractor I met with. As we were talking through the details of the addition, he kept telling me about just how stressful and virtually impossible it is to get anything done with the city of Waco, and how awful the permit office is because of all of the hoops they make you go through, and how horrible the building inspectors can be to work with. He was telling about how this addition will have them basically scrutinizing other areas of the house, which may end up with other parts of the house having to be redone if they don’t pass the energy efficiency test or this other test or that other test. (Which freaked me out because, while we’ve done our best with new insulation and windows, this is still a 75-year-old house).

I felt as though he was literally trying to talk me out of doing the addition (even though he literally said, “I mean, I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but…”) because the whole process was going to be virtually impossible to get approved, and working with the city was way more difficult than I could ever imagine, and they would make my life a nightmare for the duration of the building process.

I felt so discouraged and defeated that when he finally walked out the front door that I closed the door behind him and just cried. I seriously thought that we had made a huge mistake buying this house with the idea of adding on. In that instant, I regretted all of the time, effort, and money I had put into this house making it ours. Through tears, I texted my mom.

After a good cry, I wiped away my tears and felt determined not to let that meeting keep me down, so I called the other contractor who our previous project manager now works for and set up a meeting with him for yesterday morning.

I was dreading that meeting. I was expecting the same bad news from him, and preparing myself for a lifetime of using a small guest bedroom as our main bedroom, and having a huge master bathroom just randomly sitting by itself in the floor plan, and never having a dining room again because Matt requires a place for his recliner, and having to explain to every guest that tours our house in the future how we bought the house with plans to add on, but the city made it impossible, so here we are with a crazy floor plan that makes no sense.

Thankfully, I had the very opposite experience. Y’all, this one was amazing! He was so nice, and so knowledgeable, and so encouraging. After about ten minutes, I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I just asked him, “Does this project seem doable? I mean, do you do a lot of work inside the city of Waco? Do you have a lot of experience working with the people in the building permit and building inspection offices?” He laughed and said, “Oh, yeah! If I didn’t work inside the city of Waco, I’d lose about 95% of my business!”

He went on to tell me that, yes, some of the inspectors can be challenging at times, but knows them, he gets along with them, and they have great working relationships with each other. And he’s never had a problem getting a project past the inspection process, even if it does require a few modifications to make a picky inspector happy with some little details. He said he works with a great engineer and architect and draftsperson who all submit plans to the city regularly.

He explained that the whole building process, from concept to completion, will be a long process because the building inspections employees are always shorthanded and overworked, but there was nothing unusual at all about the addition we’re wanting to build, and he didn’t anticipate any problems with it. His whole attitude was basically we may run into a problem or a few bumps in the road along the way, but there are always ways around those, and the project will get finished. And handling those bumps in the road is one of the reasons you hire me.

He was so thorough in explaining the whole process to me — everything from having plans drawn up, to planning and budgeting and change orders, and just about everything I could have asked. By the time he left, I felt so excited and encouraged and ready to sign on the dotted line to get this project started.

As I’ve compared and contrasted those two meetings, I’ve been utterly amazed at the stark differences. One left me in tears. The other left me excited and anxious to hand over my money and get started. And it all boiled down to the differences in attitude and presentation between the two. There are some very significant business lessons in there somewhere. How not to do business vs. how to do business correctly. How to present info to a potential customer vs. how not to present info to a potential customer. How to generate positive word-of-mouth advertising vs. how to destroy your word-of-mouth reputation. How to ruin your business vs. how to make your business thrive.

Anyway, maybe it was good that I met with the first one after all. Having the awfulness of that first meeting fresh in my memory made me appreciate the second meeting all the more. And yes, I’ve definitely found my contractor for the addition. I’m very excited to work with this building company, and also very happy that my old, familiar project manager from several years ago will be overseeing the biggest project we’ll ever do on this house.