Hiring a general contractor to work on your house can be a nervous experience, and while a few inexperienced or undisciplined contractors may give the rest of us a questionable reputation, our experience has been that contractors are just like you. We have children and homes to support with the added pressure that our income is directly connected to how well we are received by you, the customer. If we develop bad working practices, fail to communicate or do substandard work, it won’t be long before we are no longer in business. Most of us rely almost entirely on references from other customers and our ultimate goal is to use you as our next reference.

The highest priority for our company since we began this work in June of 1990 has been to demonstrate integrity in our work, behavior and attitude. Inspite of this, you have some very measurable ways with which to verify our or any other contractor’s integrity before you hire them. We suggest the following:

• Contact the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries and ask if there have been any judgments against the contractor. Ask also if they have a current contractor’s license.
• Check out references. Ask for a list of all of the last 3 to 6 customers the contractor has worked for (not just a few whom the contractor has selected to give you). Keep in mind that if you don’t get absolutely glowing reports from each and every customer, this may not be a reflection on the contractor. Consider how it is with your job, some customers can be a little harder to please than others.
• Check out the contractor’s credit rating. You will have to get permission from the contractor to do this but you should be able to contact the suppliers he intends to use on your project to make sure he has paid all his previous bills. Suppliers are often the first to know if a contractor is having trouble.
• Most of all, feel free to ask any question that might concern you no matter how important it may seem to you.
• Make sure any specific concerns or requirements are written in the contract or construction agreement. You may not want workers in a specific area of the yard, you may not want anyone in the house or even sitting at a picnic table eating their lunch. It is YOUR house that we are working at and we need to be as respectful as any other guest you would feel comfortable having over. We, for example, don’t allow smoking, radios, using customer’s kitchens, microwave ovens or bathrooms. You can of course offer these if you want but we won’t assume them to be offered.

Implicit in the existence of our contractor's license is not only a $12,000.00 performance bond but a $1,000,000.00 liability insurance policy for the protection of your home, personal property and medical expenses arising out of problems related to construction in your home. We have never in 16 years had a claim even submitted to either our bond or our insurance company for any reason whatsoever and you are free to verify this with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries at (425) 990-1400 and give them our company name (Northwest Woodcrafters LLC) and contractor's license number (NORTHWL014NP Expiration date 8/17/07). We have never had either our bond, insurance or license revoked, suspended or canceled in the 16 years we have been in this or any other business.