My understanding is that progress payments are very common for
construction work, and less common for repair and maintenance work, but
still not unheard of. If you own an apartment building, for example,
and hire a plumber to do work that will take a couple of weeks or more,
you should expect to make progress payments, as the plumber has weekly
payrolls to make and probably does not have the liquid assets to make
those payments without some income.

It seems a lot of people posting here suggest acting as your own general
contractor, but I suspect they haven't given this a lot of thought.
When you act as a general contractor, you have to be very very careful
that your subs and the labor you hire cannot be considered your
employees, or if they can be considered employees, that you have covered
insurance and taxes. If, for example, you just buy some windows and
bring in a couple of laborers to install them, they are most likely
going to be considered employees, and if one is injured, you are on the
hook for costs of treatment, rehabilitation, and possibly continued
costs for permanent disability. My guess is that your homeowners'
insurance will deny coverage, leaving you alone to bear all those costs.
Further, if you haven't withheld and paid items like income taxes and
socalled security, you face the prospects of becoming familiar with a
criminal lawyer. And even years later, when those employees decide they
want social security, guess who is on the hook for not having paid it?
Too many people don't realize that a contractor's cost for labor is far
more than the hourly wage his employees draw. My son lives in
California, where it is apparently common practice for homeowners to
pick up a few off-the-books workers for a project. Apparently, it is
not uncommon for those workers to have the skill to do the work, but I
would be surprised if they new the codes involved. I always advise him
to get a licensed insured contractor or do the work himself, just
because of the liability issue.

I do a little work around my home, but for many things, hiring a good
contractor is an excellent idea in terms of getting skill and knowledge,
and saving time. On the other hand, knowing that I don't sweat joints
well, I hired a man to put in some fairly complicated new water lines;
he assembled everything before starting the sweating (a good idea, it
seems to me), but because there were so many connections, he forgot one
(not a good idea). When he turned on the water, I got my money's worth
in amusement, and learned quite a few new words, too.

Eric in North TX wrote:
cm wrote:
We ask for 1/2 down on jobs over $1000.00 up to $3000.00, after that we
usually take 1/3 at a time. We don't work for guys like Eric in Texas or
people that try to negotiate a lower estimate. No offense Eric but if you
don't trust me don't hire me.

No offence taken. As I stated I don't have a great deal of experience
in dealing with contractors, but the little I have has made me wary. At
this point, if I had a big job to do, I'd be the contractor and sub out
the parts I wasn't comfortable with.
I do have another factor creeping up on me, that being; age. As I get
older, I'm finding being 30' up on an extension ladder juggling work
and tools isn't all that it used to be. I find crawling around in a
crawl space a little troubling.
I found this discussion enlightening, and I apologize if I hurt
anyone's feelings.