Entering Into A Contract for Your Home Remodel? Read it Closely.

IT'S UP TO YOU TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE PROTECTED.

Contracts are a funny thing. No one cares what’s in them until they need them in court. Then, surprise, surprise! You just found out you are not protected. Don’t be that homeowner. I will say that the courts do tend to lean toward the homeowner in cases of contractor “abuse”. They are supposed to be the professionals after all. But if you initialed all those places that gave the contractor special rights…well, you supposedly knew what you were doing. And why pay for courts and attorney costs…wouldn’t you rather have that money go into raising the value of your remodel investment?

I mentioned in my rant on T&M contracts that I had a contractor present a homeowner with a contract that had 4 illegal clauses in it. It also held absolutely NO protection for the homeowner, just all kinds of outs for the contractor. When I presented my required changes to the contractor, he said “no one ever reads these”. YIKES! Apparently neither does he. One of the most glaring (and embarrassing for him) entries was where his secretary had put personal notes to HIM (ie: “Fred, use your standard terms and conditions but eliminate No. 6,9 blah blah”). Since he never read the contract, which he later stated was new to him, he did not see her notes! I asked him how many other jobs he was doing with this exact contract and he just got embarrassed. He didn’t answer. Good thing…I’m pretty sure I did not want to know.

Moral of the story:

READ your contracts and look to see if you’re protected. If you can’t make heads or tails of it, FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN. The added expense for a set of experienced eyes is minimal compared to what you could be risking!