The decoration diary of the contractor tells the real inside story of decoration

In front of the decoration company, the owner is like an ignorant young man who is just starting out, while the decoration company is a seasoned and scheming old man. It seems that not many owners can make cheap money when dealing with decoration companies. Isn't there a saying that goes like this, "From Nanjing to Beijing, what you buy is not what you sell." Do you think you are getting a bargain? In fact, it is a trap rather than a pie. Are you curious about what the decoration industry is like? Let’s listen to a Baotou talk about the real inside story of decoration.

1. Is the quotation true or false? Gain the trust of owners

I am 37 years old, and I started leading people to do decoration work in Beijing when I was 24 years old. I met a girl from Wuhan on the Internet. After getting married, I came to Wuhan to develop my career. I did a lot of projects, suffered a lot of anger, suffered a lot, and received a lot of praise. I experienced all the ups and downs. Let’s start from October last year. It was the peak decoration season and there were many people looking for me to do work. One of them, Boss Wu, found me. He asked me to make a quotation for him, and I made one for him, with a total price of 26,500. When I handed it over to him, he was very surprised. He kept asking me if I had missed some projects and if there was something fishy about it. This made me feel unsure. He said that a contractor once gave him a quotation, and the labor cost alone was 22,000 yuan, so he was surprised to see my quotation. I don’t know whether the boss was too careless and regarded the half-package price as cleaning up the work, or whether the contractor was too clueless. In short, it made it very smooth for me to take on this job. The decision was made within three days and only 500 yuan was paid back.

After the explanation, the workers came in. As agreed, the owner had to pay me a deposit of 1,000 yuan, but he refused to pay for it. I knew that we had not yet established a sense of trust, so I asked him to accompany me to see the materials on the pretext of buying the water and electricity materials. He was willing to do this and took a taxi to a major building materials supermarket. Oh my god, that water pipe is produced by the supermarket’s own manufacturer. I’ve never heard of the brand, and the price is twice as high as what’s on the market. I said forget it and go to my old stronghold, the prices of goods there are affordable. If the contractor does not know how to do it, the decoration cost will be more than half a package. In addition, there are some tricks that the owner can't guard against. For example, some owners of electrical conduits may know that Zhongcai is good, but Zhongcai is also divided into thick-walled and thin-walled. If you don't explain, the building materials dealer will give you the thinner one as the thicker one. The water pipes are also divided into thick and thin ones. I explained it to the owner while ordering the materials. The owner was dumbfounded and even said that it was thanks to the lack of cleaning work.

Hydropower is a very profitable project, and there is also talk of black hydropower in the Wuhan home improvement market. Why is it black? For example, electricity is divided into strong electricity and weak electricity. Decoration companies with strong electricity and medium electricity generally charge 15 yuan per meter for a single line, and 14 yuan per meter for weak electricity. A house of 100 square meters needs at least 200 meters of strong electricity and 40 meters of weak electricity. How much is it? 3500 for photoelectric. Water is charged according to the room, and some are charged by the meter. Generally, water costs about 1,000. That is, a house of 100 square meters, water and electricity of 4,500 yuan. This is the price quoted by a very honest company, and the black spots are more. Let’s talk about the price factors. First of all, according to the price in the Far East, 200 meters of thread is now no more than 110 yuan per roll. There are still three colors and three rolls left. If we divide 1.5 square meters and 2.5 square meters, 500 yuan is enough. The line pipe is 100 yuan, the water pipe Jinniu is 18 yuan for a 3-meter pipe, and there are 13 40-meter water pipes. 250 yuan is enough. Adding in 150 yuan for water pipe fittings, blind fittings, tape, shipping, etc., 1,000 yuan for materials is a lot of money. The workers' wages are 15 yuan per square meter, and the total cost including materials is 2,500 yuan, which is almost half of the profit. If you can calculate the cost of decoration, you will save a lot of money, at least you will not be ripped off.

2. The quality of decoration workers varies, and on-site supervisors are indispensable

Many decoration workers are not of high quality, and almost all migrant workers are like this. I am also a migrant worker, and I know these people very well. . So I keep an eye on the construction site very closely. Not only do I go to the site every day, but my wife and father also go there often. Even so, I can't avoid making mistakes. After arriving a little late, the guy who was demolishing the wall didn't need a cutting machine to cut the wires first, and just swung the sledgehammer on it. A loud noise could be heard downstairs. I scolded him, but he was still not convinced and kept mumbling while doing it.

In fact, this kind of thing must be taken care of, because when knocking on the wall, if you don’t use a cutting machine to mark the boundaries first, you will knock out other places with a sledgehammer directly. Wait for putty and latex paint to be applied. It will undoubtedly break. Those who do the engineering work need warranty. If you don't pay attention, you will cause trouble for yourself. There are also water and electricity grooves. If you do it directly with a hammer, there will definitely be problems.

My project involves a lot of wall knocking and a lot of water and electricity trenching. Every day the workers turn into gray men with red brick foam on their heads and faces. At night, I laid out a wooden plank and slept on the cold floor. The older man’s legs were all troubled by the sleep. They work so hard, but their demands are not high. As long as their wages are not owed, everything will be fine. Therefore, the most taboo thing about decoration is that the owner eventually defaults on payment. I had an uncle who killed the owner because he defaulted on renovation payments, and he was also shot.

What I pay most attention to when it comes to water and electricity is not the suppression, water leakage, or power outage, but the sealing after the water and electricity are completed. Because those are skills that a skilled worker must possess and generally there will be no mistakes, but sealing is often ignored. The workers didn't care. He just put some cement on the wall. Anyway, he didn't do the next process, so he couldn't care about that much. But it's troublesome when the painter applies putty to the latex paint, because it won't be even at all. From the side, there are waves everywhere, so you have to use a ruler to smooth it out while the cement is still wet.

Some owners like to leave their water pipes to manufacturers that sell water pipes, thinking that it is more reliable. In fact, this is very bad. My other owner did it this way and it was always causing trouble. Because the manufacturer only cares about laying the pipes, not the grooves, nor the fixing clips. Once the pipes are placed there, the decoration will be wiped out. The key is that plumbers and electricity technicians are often confused if they are unwilling to do such work. Therefore, it is best to hand over all the projects to one company, so that there is a clear beginning and end, and the responsibilities are clearly divided.

The price of water and electricity for workers is usually 12, I always pay 15, I don’t care about this. Without enough money, workers will be confused and everything will be ruined if they can't do their job well. You can see a worker's skill when laying out water and electricity wiring. When wiring underground, you need to be close to the wall, and you also have to ask whether to use laminate flooring or porcelain floor tiles. Composite flooring generally uses floor mats, and the pipelines cannot be too high, otherwise the owner will be forced to spend a lot more money after changing to floor mats. If necessary, a shallow groove can be dug in the ground, and half of the pipeline is on the ground and half on top. Pipes running on the ground should be wrapped in cement and protected. The wire tube cannot be bent tightly, and a bending spring must be used. To check whether the threaded wire is qualified or not, you can first pull the threaded wire out from one end. If it can be pulled out, it is qualified. This requires workers not to wire connections in the pipes, and the wires must be complete. When bending the pipe, you need to use a bending spring, otherwise it will not be pulled out. If there is a problem with the wire in the future if it cannot be pulled out, there will be no way to repair it. Why do wire pipes need to be thick-walled? Even if they are bent continuously, they will not flatten after being stepped on.

1.5 square meters is enough for the lamp cord and 2.5 square meters for the socket cord. I won’t go into details such as color separation. Some people lay the pipe first and thread it last. I'm not used to doing that, but it can be done. There is nothing much to say about the waterway except for the pressure, because the current pressure of tap water is generally 2 kilograms. If the pressure is 8 kilograms and it does not leak, it will basically not be exposed. Nowadays, PPR water pipes are very difficult to leak. However, what I often check is whether the electric wires are properly connected and whether the part of the water pipe that exits the wall is correct. If not, it will affect the appearance. It took me 10 days to do the plumbing work on two floors, which was fast enough.

Water and electricity ends and brickwork begins. During this period, I usually do one thing, which is to tell the owner to check whether the walls of each room are hollow, and then do a closed water test to check whether the waterproofing of the bathroom is qualified. If the wall surface is hollow, the latex paint will definitely crack in the future. Check it out and ask the owner to quickly find the property management company to repair it. Once the property is repaired, it will be time to paint. If the property is inspected before the painter, it will take some time for the property to be repaired, and some people will have to wait, and the construction period will be delayed. Check especially the top frequently, as it is easy for problems to occur. If the bathroom is tested for water closure before construction, the responsibilities can be easily distinguished. If you wait until the floor tiles are installed before doing it, you will be in trouble.

3. Let’s talk about some views on “guerrillas”

All our construction teams without companies and offices should be regarded as guerrillas. But there are two types of guerrillas: one is those who hang signs on the road to find work. Some of these people are also very good craftsmen, but they are not willing to work for others and are willing to rely on their own skills to work more and get more; Their craftsmanship is not very good, they just make up the numbers. These people are very stupid at work. They order only one screw when there are two screws they should order. The price is not reasonable. If you have to find people on the roadside to do it, please identify them clearly. How to tell the difference? First, try not to find young people in their 20s, and second, only experiment with them for one day after you find them. Even if you just open a slot, you can tell from the details whether they are good craftsmen, and if you find that they are not good, they will be kicked out immediately.

You can also explain this to them in advance, and you will be more proactive when taking action. Some owners are careless, and after calling in the workers, they explain the work and then disappear. It took me several days to look at it. By then, the tiles were already crooked, and the cabinets were deformed. Observe them carefully on the first day so that you can avoid encountering inhumane things.

The second type of guerrillas are like us. We never go out to do work on the road, and we rarely contract for individual projects. For example, we only do bricklaying or carpentry, and they are all complete services. Our workers are relatively stable, and their skills are not bad, because it is impossible for a team to retain people who often mess up the work for a long time. Even if they are given money, they will find good ones. Some of us work with decoration companies. We first pay a deposit ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 to the decoration company. After the decoration company takes the order, they will set aside a certain amount and then give it to these people. Larger companies have more bonus points, such as Dongyi and Longfa, which offer 40 points. That is, the engineering company with a half package of 10,000 yuan will keep 4,000 yuan and give it to the project manager. The project manager will leave 15 to 25 points, and finally the material and labor costs. Medium companies offer 25 points or 20 points. The quality of projects produced by large companies is relatively high, but the money is also high. If the money given to the big decoration companies is given to those of us in the construction team, the quality will be better. Many times the quality is poor because the owner sets the price too low. The foreman will agree to anything in order to take over the job, but the low price will make up for it by cutting corners. Therefore, owners try not to push prices too high.