- Don’t ask for insurance. Paying for insurance is expensive and once your top is on, you can’t see your contractor’s insurance policy on top. If one of the workers is injured, you can sue them as the owner if the contractor is unable to cover the claim. If the installer damages your home and goes missing, there will be no insurance company to back you up. Covering these risks costs money, so don’t ask for a certificate of insurance.
- Do not visit the workshop where your countertop will be built. Well equipped stores that are clean and efficient are expensive. The cheapest contractors work out of garages, storage bins, or even fabricate in your driveway where they don’t have to pay rent or expensive equipment to get the job done right.
- Find out if your contractor has a landline to a phone number or works strictly from a cell phone. Guys who have an office and plan to stay long term, like when you need a collateral job, will have an office and a permanent phone number. The cheap guys will only have a cell phone that can be changed at any time and they won’t have an office or location where you can find them when you need warranty work.
- Don’t ask for references.
- Do not approve slabs that will actually be used in your project. The slabs will differ depending on the lot number and when they were mined. Getting matching tiles is expensive. Let the contractor find you the cheapest slabs.
- Pay for your slabs at the slab supplier. This will save the intermediary charges. It also means that the contractor is cut off for credit reasons with the supplier, but who cares if the contractor has credit problems? You will not have warranty problems.
- Don’t ask what grade of granite you are getting. Premium and commercial grade tiles, even if they have the same name, can be very different. Having countertops with a uniform color and without imperfections is expensive.
- Don’t ask which way the slab grain will run or where the seams will be. Well-sewn countertops and countertops where the direction of the grain is well planned are much more expensive.
- Let the contractor choose the edge finish and wax the edges instead of polishing them. Edge grinding requires expensive equipment and a lot of time. Waxing is cheap and you clean it up so you get the dull, natural just-sawn look.
- Make sure you get a “free” sink. Don’t ask if it’s up to the building code or who will handle the warranty. Cheaper sinks don’t have the manufacturer’s name on them, so you can’t locate the manufacturer if the contractor goes missing. But it was free.
This article, of course, is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It’s hard to be a legitimate granite countertop manufacturer when there are pretenders doing all of the above and more to create cheap countertops. You don’t want those countertops in your house!
tom robinson
copyright 2012 T Robinson
