Outwitting Contractors: The Complete Guide to Surviving Your Home or Apartment Renovation

by Bill Adler Jr.

Remodeling your home or apartment isn't a job - it's a war. How do you defend yourself against the hordes of invaders who come into your home, renovate according to the way they want to remodel; decide there's nothing wrong with a hot-water pipe through the middle of the living room; order bathroom supplies that take three months to arrive and then come when the plumber is on vacation?What you need are simple strategies and techniques necessary to win. Best-selling author Bill Adler Jr. arms you with these strategies in Outwitting Contractors. Learn about: how to stick to the budget; how to determine how much you should pay and when you should pay it; constructing a foolproof contract; the ins-and-outs of permits; creating incentives for the work to be done on schedule; how to keep workers from trashing your home; torture-testing your new construction and appliances; keeping your children and pets safe and happy during renovation; what to do if your contractor goes broke; solving post-remodeling problems.With topics including negotiating contracts; determining who's responsible for what work on the site, and in what order the work should be done; making sure that the raw material you ordered is what gets installed; and what to do when the bathtub won't fit through the bathroom door, Outwitting Contractors offers invaluable practical information no one starting a renovation should be without. (5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 272 pages)

247 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Bill Adler Jr. is an American writer living in Tokyo.

He's the author of Outwitting Squirrels (The Wall Street Journal: "A masterpiece"; Boing Boing: "One of the funniest books I've ever read"), Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relations With Gadgets, Tell Me a Fairy Tale: A Parent's Guide to Telling Mythical and Magical Stories, and No Time to Say Goodbye, a time travel novella, and other books.