Picking a Contractor & Load Bearing Walls

The easiest way to pick a contractor is...I'm not sure there is an easy way. I've mostly picked bad ones. Or, maybe it would be more fair to say, there were always disappoints involved. There was the super personable guy, recommended by a friend and son-in-law of a colleague who was great in helping to us to reimagine our backyard and plan out the right decking. Versus our starting point of only seeing what was there and limiting ourselves. He and my husband even became friendly. Because they had three months to get to know each other, as the project drug on, and on, and on.

And who can forget the gentleman who took my money for some painting work, but didn't feel obligated to perform said work until I got the police involved. Ah, memories.

With the kitchen, we talked to a few different contractors. They might have all been great, but we decided to go with the first one who gave us the worst news: The wall we planned to take down because it wasn't load bearing, was load bearing (scroll to bottom for signs that a wall may be load bearing). This was after the other guys all agreed with us that it wasn't, and we planned our kitchen and ordered cabinets based on this assumption. We decided to hire the bearer of bad news, on the basis of he knew what he was was talking about.

The adorable shop where I randomly found our contractor. 

Incidentally, I found the company when I popped into this cute, sparkly shop in Historic Occoquan. Somehow chatting with the owner turned into talking about my kitchen project to her introducing me to a contractor who happened to rent her back office and was renovating the wine shop up the street. OF COURSE.

The moral of the story? I guess it is to ask around. If you like how somebody else's space looks, ask who built it and get referrals. Always get a second opinion. Or even a third. For us, it was the fourth one that was a charm, and that got us the company that knew how to NOT crash our second floor into our first floor.

I do regret going with the "time and materials" option that they offered, vs. working off a project rate/estimate. That took 2 weeks and several thousand dollars more than planned, since the time overruns were on our dime. But the quality of work was good, and felt collaborative. And our master bedroom remains firmly ABOVE our kitchen. Pretty happy about that!

Oh, wait. He's right. That IS load bearing. (Note the header beam.)

A few signs that a wall may be load bearing, though you only 100% know by opening it up:

• It runs down the center of your house.
• Another wall runs above or below it, parallel. A sign that the weight carries all the way through both walls and down to the foundation. 
• It runs perpendicular to floor joists. Caveat: some houses have joists running in more than one direction. That's where we got confused...

Don't that wall fool you. It's stronger than it looks.

Ultimately, we opened the wall to see that the contractor was indeed correct. We did save $$ by not hiring him to do that part. We know how to smash things pretty well. I think I will retitle this blog, "Learn From My Mistakes."