We almost had a contractor...

We were "this" close to having someone come in and do our stairs. I suppose, there's still the possibility. I just saw the potential contractor (he was to start Wednesday) and we were going over the work again. It came out that he wasn't planning on staining our stairs. (which is what we wanted). His contract says "refinishing" Whenever we get floors refinished, that includes stain. (which I explained to him) When he came around the first time, he never asked if we wanted stain. Then, he acted surprised that I wanted stain. (and wanted to charge me an additional $200 for it!) I'm already shocked at how much the stairs would cost when we've done the vast majority of the work already.

So many contractors write very vague contracts and it's just bound to make both parties unhappy. I make a point to make sure everything is written down ahead of time before work is started. We had some situations with "oral" contracts, or where one party speaks English as a second language and that compounds the problem-one of us thinks one thing and the other something else. We've learned...

The reason really why we were going to go with him was because of the drywall work that he was going to do. I might still ask him to do that. (It's to repair some ceilings after the big flooring project).

This weekend was spent doing prep work for this contractor, oh well.