After months spent at home, many of us are thinking about tackling those long-overdue home improvement projects. For anything that can’t be handled with a DIY attitude, you’ll need to hire a tradesperson to help bring your ideas to life. There are some jobs that are always best left to the professionals to help protect your home and avoid damage.
Finding the right tradesman for your home improvement project can be difficult but essential. You need to know that you’re hiring someone who won’t damage your home, overcharge you, or leave you with a mess. Read on to discover our tips for choosing the right tradesman.
A recommendation can save you time and money in the long term. Ask friends, family and neighbours if they can recommend anyone trustworthy and skilled. You don’t have to go with the first person who is recommended, so always follow your instincts. Always make sure there is a good alignment of skills for your requirements and don’t compromise just because the person is highly recommended.
You don’t have to choose the first person you find, feel free to ask around for quotes. This will help to give you an idea of the scale of the project and the financial requirements. You might have a budget in mind when you try to find tradesmen, but this could change drastically once you start to receive quotes. If a tradesperson is pushing you to agree to the project before they offer a quote, you can consider this to be a red flag.
Anything you read on a review website should always be taken with a grain of salt. When people have a positive experience, they are less likely to leave a review than when someone has a negative experience. This means that tradespeople might have a lot of negative reviews, even if they are very skilled and experienced.
If they do have negative reviews, look at how they respond to these reviews. It’s often easy to tell if the reviewer is simply disgruntled and looking to lash out and damage their business.
There are plenty of review sites out there that can help you make a final decision. These include:
Unscrupulous traders may dissolve their company and reform once they accrue too many bad reviews. Look for clues that this might be happening by checking Companies House for signs that they have been trading for a long time.
You will be able to see a list of directors and then see what other companies they may be involved with. If they have been declared bankrupt or have dissolved lots of similar companies in the past, this could be a sign they are trying to hide something.
If the person is self-employed, they might not be registered with Companies House. At the very least, they should then provide details of their insurance policy to ensure you are protected in the event something goes wrong.
