I have purchased an apartment in Sydney CBD, but kitchen and bathroom are quite dated. Being an OzBer I am concerned about hiring dodgy tradies, losing deposits and other horror stories.
Are there major companies that do renovations that you recommend? Looking for something standard.
Thanks, MF
Never trust mates who are tradies, they almost always take advantage of your good nature. Also if they screw the job you got little recourse unless you want to lose the friendship. The best tradies you will find are through word of mouth, talk to friends and relatives about who they used previously.
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Mates who are tradies will often be able to recommend someone if they cannot do the job. A proper mate would not stiff you on a job, they wouldn't do it poorly either.
It's an expensive proposition to discover whether your mate is a proper mate or not on a job you only want to do once.
We "had" a mate we'd known for years who was a whiz at painting cars with all the proper equipment, including a booth. We'd seen his work up close on 5+ cars. When we asked him to do ours, we stressed that we weren't in a hurry because it was a vintage car that we would only use occasionally. It turned out he needed the money and did a half-a$$ed job in a garage he only had access to after-hours instead of a booth with not enough paint because he miscalculated how much paint he'd need.
Our neighbour had a mate tile his bathroom and kitchen. The neighbour bought the tiles and was paying cash for labour. The colour scheme was the same for both areas, white with black feature tiling. The mate used the bathroom black tiles in the kitchen and the kitchen tiles in the bathroom. Sadly, there weren't enough tiles for the kitchen so my neighbour went to buy more and there was no more stock left. It's the husband who is the detail-oriented one in the family and I swear his blood pressure went up every time he went into the kitchen.
I only use proper tradies so that I can yell and fuss (although I've never had to) should the job go wrong.
Why can't you yell and fuss (not that you've had to) with a mate?
You'd be taking more risk getting someone you don't know from the yellow pages.
Yes, word of mouth is king when it comes to tradie recommendations.
No tradie mates - I work in an office, might ask around for a recommendations. I saw that good guys do renos - has anyone used them?
when purchasing tiles, most tile shops have in-house workers who will lay them for you at an extra cost. the rest just needs to be purchased by you and installed by a plumber.
Kitchen depending on your budget, look up different companies or just go to your show rooms and get them to install it for you.
A lot can be purchased through eBay and gumtree at discounted prices too.
Look for mates who are tradies that you can trust. If you need painters or electricians i can refer you a couple of people.