Is this builder taking the piss?

[Poppoppogo]

We’re having a bit of work done on our house, so have hired a family friend of my partners to do the work.

He’s been here for 3 weeks already, but I really feel like the amount of work shouldn’t have taken this long. Plasterers and carpenters have come and gone and done a great job, but he’s still here.

Yesterday he put up 3 doors, affixed handles to two of them. One of them needed to be cut down, but the other two were bought to fit the door frames he had built, so needed no adjusting, size wise. One is an airing cupboard door with no latch, so it literally just needed hanging.

AIBU to think this might not be a days (and £250 work)?

Are you paying by the day or by the job? If the former, I'd be expecting them to put in a 7.5 hr day - and you have a problem. If the latter then it's not unusual for builders to work on several different projects at once.

If I asked "what does your contract say?" would you tell me you dont have one?

When we were getting work done last year the internal doors went on last.
My builder (who in fairness is a joiner to trade) fitted and hung 6 internal doors in one day. This included hinges, handles and shaving the bottom.
I paid him by job not in days though so it wouldn't have been worth his while financially to dawdle.
He was with us about 6 weeks in total and he coordinated all the other trades.
Can you negotiate paying for the total works rather than by the day? It sounds a bit like he is spinning out the work needing done.

I would say don’t pay per day, pay for the job!

It’s hard to say without knowing whether you negotiated a price for the work or are paying a daily rate plus materials.

If it’s price for the work and he’s within the deadline, he can come and go and do a lot or a little on different days. This might be what you have as you say he is a friend of your partners and so may be fitting you in as a favour despite having other customers/jobs to do so you don’t have to wait months. Did you wait long for him?

If it’s daily rate + materials, if he does a partial day, you can log it and ask for pro rate to be done. But it’s touchy because time he spends driving to get doors/materials/tools and time he spends chasing other trades count as work even if he is not physically at your home doing something.

The £250 is his daily rate, we pay for the materials. He was here for his whole working day.

Why are you paying per day? No wonder he is dragging it out. You messed up there. With all tradesman you tell them what you want doing, they give you a quote for the job and tell you roughly how long it'll take, you maybe pay some upfront for materials then the rest at the end
He's taking you for a mug.

His daily rate is far too high for the skills he’s showing. Make a list of what else needs to be done and ask him to give a set price for his labour.

Ugh, I know all this. He's totally mugging us off. I haven’t been that happy with his work in the past (we just found that a pipe he installed in our downstairs loo has been leaking as it wasn’t sealed and he really screwed up the pipe work behind the sink too. It looked so messy we had to ask him to change it). DPs parents absolutely swear by him though and they renovated a huge old house. They’ve been using him for years!

Have your inlaws used him recently though? People do slow down and can lose skills as they age, I noticed that with my own dad who was once a DIY marvel.

Fuck him off at the first opportune moment. For a £250 day rate he needs to be making decent progress everyday.Your description doesn't match that.