"Tony" wrote in message
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"D. Gerasimatos" wrote in message
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My conclusion when it comes to sprinklers is:

If you want it done right then do it yourself.

Thanks to everyone in this thread who has replied so far.

Perhaps it's just the area that I live in, but I've become very frustrated
with contractors I've tried to deal with

I think it is a pandemic issue. People are pressed to make as much money as
they can. Good help is hard to find, especially if you want to pay $6/hr,
so many people end up with help that is hopelessly inadequate and most
places have high turn-over. I can't tell you how close I came shoving a
cell phone up the ass of a couple of contractors. They spend most of the
day talking to people who are unhappy with the last job while trying to
schedule the next job with the next victim. When you need to talk about
something critical, the wife or kids are on the phone about some personal
issue!

I also think that people are less honest than they were thirty years ago. I
think we hear about so many shady things and illegal deals on the nightly
news that people think that being dishonest is part of business. My mother
had a contractor throw about $1000 dollars worth of trim pieces into the
dumpster. When I asked when the molding were going to be applied to the new
cabinets, he said he never used the stuff. I was speechless. After raising
hell with everyone, the store (Lowe's) had to order new trim (crown
moldings, light rail, wood end panels, etc.) and he had to come back and
finish the job. He tried to leave a bunch of 220V wiring hanging lose in
the cabinet under the oven. The fan for the hood wasn't aligned with the
damper on the exhaust ducting and when you turned on the fan, the louvers
wouldn't open and the hood wouldn't exhaust. They wanted to put some caulk
around the thing! I literally told them to get the hell out of the house
and to send someone back to do the job right. I ended up calling Lowe's
national headquarters.

I had a small kitchen fire. The "restoration" people ended up causing a
considerable amount of damage. They had to refinish my cabinets and tried
to install the door with raw wood on the inside surface instead of finishing
both sides of the door. They lost one door! I could go on, but ultimately
it ended up in mediation. Had they been paid, we would have never been able
to resolve the issue in a fair way. Had I not documented everything
(including pictures) I would have been screwed at the mediation proceedings.

Believe me, its not just you or your part of the country.