"Nobody" writes:
I live in Southern California where prices are high and craftsmanship is
generally poor and very low quality.

I don't think this is unique to Southern California. It has been my
experience in Boston as well that reliable craftsmen who do good work
are few and far between. Also, many of the ones who do good work
within their areas of expertise have the annoying habit of saying yes
when you ask them if they can do something *out* of their area of
expertise as part of a project, rather than admitting that they won't
do a good job of it and recommending that you bring in someone else for
that part of the job.

We hired a landscaper to redo our back yard after we moved into our
house in 1997. For the most part, he did a really great job. However,
the work ended up taking over 50% longer than his estimate and hence
the cost was over 50% higher than his estimate. When it was clear the
the cost was starting to get out of hand, we sent him a polite letter
pointing out that the overruns were getting excessive and asking him to
absorb part of them by reducing his hourly rate for the remainder of
the project. After that, he finished what absolutely had to be
finished and then disappeared, never to return any of our phone calls
again. I don't think we were being unreasonable; and I doubt he
thought that we were being unreasonable -- he just decided it made more
financial sense for him to cut and run than to honor his commitment
(i.e., the estimate he gave us and the work he agreed to perform).

We had an electrician who did absolutely amazing work, but he was
consistently behind schedule and seemed to have an endless supply of
excuses. Friends of ours who had recommended him to us used him when
they redid their kitchen, and he failed to show up so many times, with
so many ludicrous excuses, that he delayed the completion of their
project significantly and the contractor was mighty peeved. Plain and
simple, he was terrible at managing his time, needed the money too much
to turn people down when he wouldn't be able to do their work in a
timely fashion, and was apparently too conflict-aversive to tell people
the truth when he couldn't do work within the promised timeframe.

We had a handyman replace some windows in our attic. We informed him
when he came to bid on the work that the sashes' paint was leaded and
that we'd had a lead inspection and intended to legally delead the
house, and we asked him to confirm that he was legally allowed to
remove leaded window sashes and to dispose of them properly. He
assured us that he was, and then he proceeded to do the work without
any containment curtains or air filtration and to dispose of the sashes
by putting them out at the curb in front of our house for trash pickup,
thus exposing both him and us to legal action for improper lead-paint
disposal. He also cut halfway through one of our house's support beams
when installing clothesdryer venting we asked him to install.

We hired a contractor to rebuild our front porch, replace all of our
windows (other than the ones replaced by the idiot mentioned above) and
delead our house (through a subcontractor). He used tongue and groove
boards for the floor, even though I've learned since then that any
idiot knows that you don't use tongue and groove boards for outdoor
floors in climates like ours because they warp after the first winter
(which ours did). At least he finished on time and within his budget,
and the rest of his work was very good (although I dont' think he put
enough insulation into the wall cavities when replacing the windows).

We had a mason replace our concrete stoop. His masonry work was
great. We mentioned to him in passing that we were planning on
installing a new outer bulkhead door, and he said he could do it, but
he made the door open in rather than out and cut through a support
beam to do it (What *is it* about these people and support beams!?
Don't they understand what a *support beam* is?). On the bright side,
when we complained, he fixed the beam and fixed the door to open in
the other direction. I'd hire him again for masonry work, but not for
anything else.

We had good painters paint about half of the inside of our house a few
years back. They pretty much finished on time and on budget, and did a
good enough job for what we were paying them, including doing a great
job on replacing several of our ceilings. Unfortunately, when we
wanted to do more painting a few years later, we discovered that they
were no longer in business.

We had a plumber who was friendly and showed up when he said he would,
but his work was messy, the drain pipes in a laundry sink he installed
for us leaks, and when I called him to ask if he had accidentally taken
an extension cord I loaned him for one of his jobs in our house, which
I thought was a perfectly reasonable an innocuous question (I certainly
wasn't trying to imply that he'd taken it on purpose!), he acted all
offended at my suggestion that he might have done this, presumably
because he thought I was accusing him of doing it on purpose, and since
then hasn't returned my calls for subsequent jobs.

We recently found a new electrician, and so far he's been great. He
even came back at no charge to fix a problem with some work he did in
our kitchen, and was perfectly nice about it. So far he's our
existence proof that the good guys do in fact exist :-).

The overarching lessons I've learned from all these experiences a

* It's hard to find good people because the good people always have
more than enough work to keep them busy, because the people they've
done work for in the past *know* they're good and keep directing work
and/or new clients their way.

* If anybody tells you to call so-and-so because "he's always
available," run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. If
someone is always available, it's because they don't get any repeat
business, i.e., they're bad.

* Ask everyone you know for recommendations. Don't ever use anyone who
wasn't recommended by someone, and don't ever use anyone without
checking their references.

* You may have to wait a long time to get someone good to do work for
you. As you've noticed, small jobs are much harder to find people for
than larger jobs, so one option is to collect a bunch of jobs, to make
it attractive enough for workmen to come to your house, and then hire a
reputable contractor (recommended, with good references!) to get them
all done.