Since the beginning of May I have been working on a home improvement project. I want to add a roof over the existing concrete patio plus cover the concrete and add a fireplace. Should be easy enough, search the web, find a contractor, write a few checks, and presto.

Finding a contractor was harder than I thought for this type of project. Finding a reasonably priced contractor was next to impossible. I ended up hiring the Carpenter. Now I do not have to pay the extra markup of the contractors. Additionally the carpenter was able to see my vision of the project and not try to limit it to his own skill set. Contractors have crews they use which may or may not do what you want. By interviewing several contractors and carpenters I was able to get a range of bids from reasonable to “are you gold plating the roof” expensive.

Then we went furniture shopping for the new patio room. Again specialists are a lot more expensive. I want to give some free advertising to Parrsfurniture.com (Parrs Furniture in Alpharetta). They have the best deals on quality wicker and aluminum patio furniture and are super friendly people. Other patio and outdoor places are 20-30% more.

You must set a budget for your projects then find the right folks or stores to work with. If your project is big in scope you may have to either raise your budget or settle for something different than your original design. Some contractors/carpenters can even help you improve upon your original vision and point out savings. It pays to get many opinions until they begin to overlap and confuse you.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.