As far as being duped, if you don’t know what to look for, you don’t know what is being done wrong or right; however, there is a level of common sense and intuition involved that should have raised red flags on some of these cases. However, regardless of if you are able to pickup those glaring clues, it shows how careful you really must be.

Our friends went by word of mouth with a contractor, and I will tell you they are getting ripped off. I expect they will have issues down the road. They won’t listen to reason, so not much to help them. There are clues we have pointed out that they should run. I mean they are doing measurements instead of the contractor; the contractor wants them to buy cabinets from the Home Depot “he prefers” rather than the Home Depot they bought the cabinets from; they didn’t get multiple bids on the project, etc.

@Sam: I don’t know if Bob Vila is outdated, because i thought the original show he hosted This Old House was very good. I just thought he wasn’t a hands on person, nor did the show point out what to look for. At least you see Holmes putting some muscle into the work. I wish I could find a master carpenter like Norm Abram to do all my projects. That guy invents and has every widget and tool in the book.

I think the trend these days is to inform people of “buyer beware” situations, which unfortunately is the reality these days. I also believe this is the reality, because people want to skip corners or hire too good to be true people to do their work in an effort to save money.