Tradesmen, like everyone else are a mixed bunch. I pick them carefully and don't like using the ones I know socially in case they do a crap job. As it happens, we allowed our friend's son to redecorate our house recently as he'd just started an apprenticeship with a local builder. Big mistake. He managed to get paint all over our stone and wooden floors and as we live in a barn he got paint on our 300 year old beams because he didn't mask them properly. He then put up a scaffolding tower in the hall without clearing out the furniture and smashed a £500 hand made glass lamp shade that the missus loved (and put it in the bin without telling us!) overreached from the top of the tower causing a plank to lift and in trying to regain his balance, smashed his hand on a scaffolding pole and broke a finger. Didn't turn up to work since leaving the house in chaos and covered with paint in all the wrong places - and where he had painted it was a crap job. As a result, I spent the bank holiday weekend redoing his work, cleaning down the floors and beams, redecorating our bathroom myself so he wouldn't have to do it, stripping and revarnishing the wooden floors and cleaning up the shit he left behind. In theory he's coming back on Monday, but I've made sure that there's only a bit left to do as a damage limitation/PR exercise. Missus mentioned it to his mum when we were out for a drink at the weekend and even though she's one of our best mates, seemed slightly miffed at the suggestion that she'd not brought her son up properly.
My missus wanted to help the lad out - and basically he's a nice lad - but in trying to take shortcuts/being a lazy fucker he created twice as much work as was needed in the first place. My view is that if you want a job done properly - do it yourself.
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