A.Lee coughed up some electrons that declared:

snip
I gave a price today, - cut down 3 kitchen worktops to fit, join up 1,
and cut the kickboards to size. I thought 3 - 4 hours, so £50. the bloke
thought that was too much. FFS, he'd moan if I didnt cut them square,
yet the moaning bugger didnt want to pay.

The chap work got in to do some major work summed it up as "no b*gger wants
to pay". He's good, but down a few tens of grand on his cashflow.



They had supposedly paid a sparkie to go through the house to rewire.
There were no new wires downstairs, but a new consumer unit was in
place, but poorly laid out - space for 10+ MCB, but only 5 in use.

*cough*


The kitchen had all of its old tiles pulled off, but then only half of
it had been retiled. The rest of it had been emulsioned on top of all
the old bits of tile cement, and craters pulled out by the tiles. The
new tiles were not in line, so could be thought of as a slight zig-zag
effect. Rough is too nice a word for this standard of work.
2 pieces of skirting had been put in.No mitre at the join, so the corner
of one stuck right out.
It went on throughout the house, with bodges and poor work everywhere.
I got paid my pittance, but I felt sick at having to work in such a crap
environment.

The upside of it is though, the landlord saw what I had done, was
obviously pleased with it, took me aside, and asked for my number. I'm
going back there to fit a shower on Thursday.

Sounds promising. Does the landlord have any other properties? Sounds like
you could win some potential future repeat custom too; landlords always
need stuff doing from time to time.

I helped our landlord arrange a tiler to refit our shower cubicle when it
died of multiple leaks. I was totally impressed by the chap's work and his
manner and his tidiness during and after each day on the job.. The chap
wasn't cheap, but he wasn't outlandish either. Planning to buy a house in
the near future, so if I need any (ie too hard/lack of time/whatever)
bathroom work done, the tradesman in question will automatically get the
job. Plus my recommendation got him another job a few months after our
shower job.

Good luck.

Cheers

Tim