The following is a list of the Top Ten Best Paid Jobs – from a Builder’s Point of View!
A. You can’t do them yourself – not even in your wildest DIY dreams with a guest appearance from Barry Bucknall.
B. Even if you could do them, you wouldn’t want to because; you are scared of heights, heavy lifting, explosions and irate wives who hate you even more than usual when you make a monstrous DIY mess up of the job she’s wanted doing since Len Fairclough was in Corrie, you don’t like getting messy, you earn so much dosh that your wife organizes the job and you’ll never know it’s been done (or needed doing in the first place).
C. You want it doing immediately – it’s mid January and you’ve got no hot water and heating is a good reason to accept spending wads of cash on a plumber’s services.
D. The Builder really doesn’t want the job because he’d rather go to his villa in Menorca, so he puts in a ludicrously high price – which you accept because he was the only one who could be bothered to send a quote in.
Top Ten Most Profitable Building Jobs
1. Roofing.
Tip - ask for photos. Before and after. Everyone’s got a camera on their phone nowadays, so get some indication of what needs doing without defying the Laws of Gravity.
2. Plumbing/Gas fitters Jobs
Tip - always get a second and third opinion on larger jobs. INSIST on seeing Gas Safe registration for gas work and always get the relevant certification when the job is completed.
3. Window replacement
Tip - try to source the windows yourself and employ a builder/carpenter on a day rate.
4. Electrics
Tip – Love your family and love your life and don’t look at your bank balance unless absolutely necessary!
5. MDF cupboards!
Working with MDF is easy for a chippie it is a very cheap material - £18.00 for a huge sheet (but they won’t tell you that). Usually you want cupboards either side of a fireplace, which immediately makes this work “bespoke” – but only to you! He does them week-in-week-out, EXACTLY the same. The design rarely changes (base unit with doors to hide the Freeview box you’ll tell the chippie you never watch, and a shelving arrangement for your Camus, Nietsche and Soldier-something-a nit-skin that you say you read in the original.
He’ll add £200 to the total merely based solely on your choice of reading material you intend to display on the shelves!
Tip - It is simple work (to a good carpenter) and you would be best advised to pay a chippie on a decent day rate and to pay for the materials as he buys them.
Flaunt a few Jilly Cooper novels for a decent discount. Nothing wrong with Jilly Cooper, by the way.
6. New Kitchens
Tip – Get a trusted builder/carpenter in to consider buying cheap base and wall units (carcasses) and add posh doors, fittings and worktops (that you source on the internet) for over HALF the price of the expensive kitchen shop.
7. Guttering
Tip – Get the lot replaced in on go so that the company has to offer a guarantee (nobody can give a guarantee for a repair) and keep the guarantee certificate under one of the legs of your exercise bike as it’s unlikely to be disturbed for YET ANOTHER 10 years.
8. Plastering
Tip - Check out our Plastering guide, get the price right and then pay up the second he’s slammed his van door shut for the day. It’ll make you happy.
9 Fencing
The thing is that fencers can get away with it. All dirty, flat bed lorries and muddy boots; they are to finesse what a flying hammer is to subtlety. Their sole aim is to invade the garden en masse in an effort to get in and out as fast as possible, thus maximizing their earning potential. And who can blame them!
Tip – The etiquette is to put the fence up “good side out” ie your neighbour gets the best side of the fence (this is Britain after all – we’re so polite it almost hurts), so don’t tell the fencer otherwise. DON’T ask them to break with decorum and do the job the other way round. The next thing they’ll know, you’ll be asking them not to ruin your hallway carpet without a by-you-leave. Whatever next!
10. Change a WC seat in a student house
The reason for this is multifold - the landlord is paying (he's too busy with his girlfriend at his holiday villa in Cyprus); the students sure as heck won't do it – (they'll be too busy making a hideous mess in the kitchen as they attempt to satiate their laziness driven hunger); Paul Daniels is just and act: this means things won’t just happen by magic.
There's another simple reason why the price will go up. A working man likes a cuppa; yet if the receptical involved in that process has: (a) Only been washed once by a student properly in the past eight months (b) the inside of the cup contains enough tannin to warrant a cold chisel to remove it - the man doing the job will have to go without. And he won’t like that. Cue an extra £50. Or maybe a ton. That, plus the call out, plus having to listen to a lanky-haired youth call him ‘dude’ incessantly makes the £150.00 seem quite reasonable.
Tip: Don’t bother fixing it. Wait for the students all to pass their degrees and leave, (virtually overnight they’ll go from good-for-nothing wastrels to trainee bank managers and executives at a stroke, with about as much rebellion in their bodies as sheep with confidence issues). The landlord will move to Cyprus with the girlfriend and then sell the house in its current state for about tuppence. It’ll probably all work out cheaper – apart from the divorce lawyer costs when his wife finds out.
Good luck
The Building Sheriff.
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