User Example wrote:

Plumbers, A/C repairmen, electricians, bug killers, and anyone else that
will come to your house to do their job is going to charge you too much
for the work.

You just wrote that anyone that comes to your house is going to charge
you too much. What are you suggesting? Bring the bathroom to them?

Nothing like a blanket statement to start off a post. It immediately
let's people know where you stand so they can determine if they want to
keep reading or not.

You are paying for the worker, his supervisor, the people
who subcontracted them, the secretary, their "experience",

You left out materials. Besides the labor and subs, the other things
are called overhead - the cost of doing business. You left out
insurance, licensing, vehicles and other equipment, etc., etc.

and some
extra just to rip you off.

I'm not sure if you're talking about profit, contingency amounts or
gouging. Of course it could just be that whatever amount they charged
would be too much for you.

Some of the work they do takes skill and some things they can do better
because they know some tricks of the trade. But for the most part there
isn't anything that you can't do as well or better. They will almost
always rush a job. You have the luxury of taking our time.

Taking what could be excessive amounts of time to complete a task is
not doing a better job. If you ignore time, and look at just the
quality of the work, it's still doubtful that a novice, in any line of
work, could perform work better than someone who has done it hundreds
or thousands of times before. If you believe otherwise, it's either
your ego talking or you really don't know how to evaluate the work
being done.

Bottom line, if you want quality work at a modest price then you are
going to have to do it yourself.

My time is worth more than your average tradesman's hourly rate. If
you consider your own time to have no value, then you're right, doing
your own work will be a modest price. This is the standard
self-deluding position of most people that crow about their savings
doing their own work. If you factor in the time it takes them to do
the work, multiply that by how much they earn at their regular job and
add that to the project cost, there is rarely a savings. Unless the
person earns very little to start with.

You can find people to hire that will
do excellent work but they will overcharge the heck out of you.

Finishing off your post with another obviously fallacious blanket
statement always helps people classify your position.

thanks

R