Sign a
personal-services-contract
with each of your
sub-contractors

Once you sign a personal-services-contract with a sub contractor, you are bound to the terms written within it, as is he, regardless of anything else promised that was agreed upon over the telephone or in person .

For your protection, it is good to sign a contract with each of your subs stating exactly

1. What work they are going to do for you,

2. What they are going to charge, and even

3. How long they say it will take them to do the job.

4 . Any additional details you want recorded

I heard one contractor tell me that they had signed a personal-services-contract that said they would be finished by “X” date or they would be charged $100/day for every day beyond “X” DATE. In this case, the cement contractor held them up for weeks amd they had to pay nearly 60 days @ $100/day.

When I heard this, I thought that was ridiculous to charge such an outlandish amount, but after our experience with our excavator, I'm of a mind to say that “the laterals will be completed by “X” date or the Excavator will pay $100/day beyond that date”. That statement would insure that the Excavator would make sure those laterals were dug in a timely manner.

By the way, I've since heard of an outfit charging $2,500 a day if not completed by "X" date. $100 a day is not too much th charge.

It cost us literally thousands because the Excavator kept putting me off saying “Oh, we don't need to do them yet. I'll tell you when we'll do them.” He was counting on my inexperience to let him dictate the terms.

As it turned out, he got sick and the project drug out into the cold of winter, and we had a 14 inch frost depth when he had to dig. Our water line was exposed to the cold and froze, so there was even more costs to add to our expense while he (excavator) covered the trench with a tarp and heated the pipes. And then when he wanted his money, it was my fault he hadn't gotten paid yet.

A simple personal-services-contract would have settled that, but as I tell in my experience section, he was as “slippery as an eel” and escaped having to sign a contract with me.

Cover your bases in case your subcontractor doesn't do what he said he would do, or tries to charge you more than was originally quoted by signing a personal-services-contract signed by both you and the subcontractor you have sellected to do the actual work.

The personal-services-contract should include exactly what is included as mentioned above.

Protect yourself in the event that your sub will want to increase his charges after the work is done.

A lawyer suggested to one of my contractor sons, that that he needed to get a copy of the subs' contractor license. That would be proof that he was licensed and could be used in a legal dispute over anything to do with his profession.

Our daughter and her husband had several experiences I'll eventually have them added to my Housebuild Blog in relation to getting the subcontractor's license. You'll have to check back regularly as I am adding site content almost daily and I haven't added the Blog yet. Our inspector did warn us to be careful and not pay the framing sub we had, until he was finished with his work. It is quite a usual thing for framers and other subs to do only a half baked job and ask to get paid.

A few subs will tell you they "have to pay their help" and so they need to get paid. Since you are a newbie to this world, they expect you to be soft and pay them, out of empathy for their "plight". Once they have their money, they will sometimes “walk”, and never come back to finish your job.

As long as you hold the money, a sub-contractor can't leave if he wants to get paid. Make sure your contract is specific as to how much they must do before they get paid.See Contracts on left.Framing a house is when the most incredible things can happen.

You are most vulnerable at this point. If the framer only does a “slipshod” job, then as long as you hold the purse strings, you can insist on them correcting, or finishing whatever they are overlooking or doing wrong.

In our case, RL took a day off work for a day to sit at the job site telling them "If you want to get paid then finish this or that, put up the inside walls,put in a window in the garage like the plan says...." etc. They did it, but he shouldn't have had to take off work to make them do it. That was the framer contractor's job. We just needed the job done so we could move on.

Above all SIGN A personal-services-contract!