My BIL (wife's brother) is one such person who gets a price in his head and is a danger to himself and those around him from that moment on.
Just to set the scene:
I called by a couple of years ago, just as they were complementing their new kitchen with tiled splashbacks. My BIL went away overnight so I stayed with his wife and kids.
Their kitchen looked great. It had been fitted well but he had got one of his mates from work to come and do the splashbacks for £100 (what the
tile shop suggested he should pay). The job was in the preparation stage, the windowsill (plasterboard) had 4 inch holes in it, and matey had done a 'great' job repairing one of the walls underneath the wall cabinets. Now, bearing in mind this was a modern 4 bed detached built around 1999 with stud walls, matey had managed to put a curve in the wall using thistle bonding coat in trying to repair the holes. What was wrong with keeping the wall straight I don't know!
His wife begged me to do the tiling whilst I was up there, she knew what sort of job was to be expected, but he seemed oblivious. I explained that I didn't have my tools with me, besides I didn't want to get involved. She offered to go out and buy the tools, then pay me for doing it! She really didn't want this guy to do the job, but I didn't want to spend the time putting right his mess. I like her a lot and really regretted not doing this.
The next time I visited them was to redo their bathrooms a few months later. Matey had returned and finished the job, and what a complete mess he'd made of it! Visible
tile spacers, Tiles all over the place, the tiles were not sitting at all flush. He must have struggled with the windowsill because that was one of the worst areas. Bearing in mind that they were only 6 inch tiles he seemed incapable of fixing them properly. A few of the tiles were cracked, where he had tried to cut them around a socket and just given up, so he stuck both bits on and grouted the cracks!
Then BIL had the cheek to question why I wanted what I did to do the bathrooms, suites and all, when he seemed to think that he could get them both done for £700 including tiling! Again, more prices he'd got from a shop.
I was so close to telling him where to stick his bathrooms.
It was only when he decided to 'help' by assembing the bath. It took him ages. at that point he started to realise why I wanted more than £700!
I wouldn't have put up with that attitude from anyone who was not related. I found it easy as I could just put it down to him being stubborn.
His wife was way ahead of him in realising that he can't go on paying what he paid that cowboy and hope to get a better job.
Although he did fix some of the uncut tiles under my instruction and help rip out the old suites etc, I spent a huge amount of time in preparing the walls. In both bathrooms whole sheets of plasterboard got removed and replaced to save time on preparation.
