Value Over Cost: Why Hiring Quality Tradespeople Is Essential for Your Home Renovation

I see posts on social media every day asking for referrals for “a great lawyer” or “a good accountant” or “a plumber that ‘won’t break the bank’” and I have to question what motivates people. If you’re getting divorced or being charged with a crime, you want the best lawyer ?– which can easily run you $650-$850 per hour. If you are behind with payments to the CRA or if you are being audited, you want a good accountant to help you. For this, you can easily spend $400-$600 per hour. So why is it that when it comes to your biggest asset, your home, your sanctuary, that you want a cheap trades person or unlicensed contractor to do the work? This baffles me and I have yet to meet a plumber or electrician that charges anywhere even close to those rates – even though some of them should.

Having been a general contractor that does medium to large jobs over the past decade, the one thing I can say with 100% certainty is that you get what you pay for in a renovation. ?A licenced electrician or stone mason that has a wealth of experience and can do wonders in your house is often condescended to and assumed to be uneducated. Why is this? In order to become a plumber or electrician you need to put in 9000 hours as an apprentice. You need both schooling and extensive experience onsite, learning under a licensed mentor, much like a surgeon. So when you do hire a trades person and they come and diagnose an issue and fix it, you are not paying them for the 45 minutes it may have taken them to do the job, you are paying them for years of hard work, experience, and the tens of thousands of dollars of tools in their truck that will allow them to do that job in 45 minutes.

We need to change our way of thinking and looking at trades people. They are essential to anyone with a home of any kind, they are there to help you, and if all you want is for the job to go to the lowest bidder, then don’t be surprised when you have an issue down the road. Would you look for a cheap, unlicensed doctor to perform your cosmetic surgery? I assume not. So ask yourself if you really want to choose the lowest bidder to renovate your house, cut corners and cause potential leaks, mold or structural damage in your family’s home. Yes renovations are more expensive today than they were 5 years ago, but so are lawyers, accountants, cars and groceries. I understand that money doesn’t grow on trees and I definitely do not have an unlimited budget for anything, but I do understand what quality is and why it’s important to do a job right the first time.

I quoted a previous client $30K to gut and renovate their bathroom. They hired someone else to do it for $17K. One year later they called me back to fix the work because it was leaking down through their dining room ceiling and causing massive damage. So instead of saving money, they will end up spending close to double what I initially quoted them to fix a much bigger problem that never had to happen. Not to mention the disruption to their home life and the aggravation and stress of having to deal with this.

Licensed, experienced trades people are invaluable. If you undervalue them to look for cheaper alternatives, you are making a mistake that will pretty much always cost you time, money and aggravation.