AIBU to say that the key to a happy life is access to good tradespeople and the means to pay for them?

[Whatevergetsyouthroughthenight]

I have an old house which requires a lot of maintenance. Stuff is always going wrong.

I had a good tradesperson/bad tradesperson day yesterday and it affected my mood so much. My boiler was playing up (hot water), I picked up the phone, called the plumber, he answered and gave me a day and time next week to come and fix it. Bliss.

Meanwhile, the person who is supposed to have come round to fix a reoccurrence of a problem in my living room failed to materialise and it’s now been two weeks with all the furniture out of place waiting for them to come and do the job. Tried chasing them with no success. I was feeling quite teary after that.

YANBU: Good, reliable, easy to contact tradespeople that you can afford are key to a happy life.

YABU: A loving partner, family and friends make you far happier than finding good tradespeople.

I can't vote because those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Good tradespeople are a god send though. We also have a lot of work to do on our property and find that we use the same reliable people over and over again. It just takes some time to weed out the unreliable ones

When i got engaged, my godmother said you either need to marry a rich man or a handy man, which is he?

I laughed and assumed she was joking but now i wonder if it was the voice of experience.

My mum lives alone and I would say she agrees that good tradespeople make a huge difference to her life. Im not sure she would ditch friends and family for them though. Maybe!

Good tradespeople are great and all but I think calling them THE key to a happy life is a bit bonkers.

Well I'm married to builder and he's too busy to do much in our house! There's a shortage of tradespeople so lots of incompetent ones sneek through unfortunately op.

Good tradespeople who answer their phone and turn up when they say are worth their weight in gold, unfortunately they are few and far between.

they all want the big jobs eg full new kitchen, extensions, full new roofs, they don’t want the one slate missing off the roof or the leaky toilet or any minor jobs.

we had a problem with our overflow pipe and contacted 3 local firms who all said they would turn up and none of them did. We ended up getting a friend of a friend who is retired to come and fix it. It took him 10Mins max!

It's genuinely one of the reasons I love DH so much. Almost no need to deal with tradesmen.

Very much a first world problem but my god yes! Would give anything to throw money at this awful house I live in. Hope you get everything fixed OP.

Well, everyone in my family has died (DH included) and my friends are moving away as they reach retirement age, so I had a lovely chat with my handyman when I bumped into him yesterday and booked him in for some jobs, so not bonkers in my world!

Yanbu.
I'm a lone parent and really struggling for house maintenance repairs at the moment. No one replies.
I'm "this" close to getting a small loan and using a large local house maintenance company so they can blitz it all in one go.

Trouble we find is the reliable/trustworthy ones are older and they keep retiring just after we discover them. The joiner we've been using for the last few years has just given up and has got a job as a lorry driver instead, though he has said he plans to fit in a few small jobs on his days off! The decorator we've used a few times has given up and gone back to working as a post man! Plumber has retired as has our plasterer/damp proof guy! Electrician has retired and passed the business to his son who isn't interested in "normal" electrics and only does "modern tech" work such as smart homes, LED lighting, solar panels and heat pumps! So within a couple of years, we've gone from having a full set to having none at all! It took us 25 years to find the "full set" of trustworthy reliable ones after years of suffering the time wasters, con merchants and incompetents, who were mostly the younger ones. It's a good job that we've both picked up a lot of skills, experience, etc along the way as we can now do quite a lot of things ourselves - we did step back from DIY when we had good reliable people to do things for us, but we've now accepted we're going to have to get back to doing more ourselves!

Yep.

Think that’s a bit of a stretch. I am currrently waiting for a patio to be fixed, my leaking roof to be redone and a hole in the ceiling to be replastered and can’t say it is affecting my life to the point that I’d ditch my family and friends to resolve it all.

Not even a little wobble to my way of thinking? When the rain is coming in through the roof and the kids are fighting over who gets to sleep in the dry bed, your DP is swearing and having a strop because he’s just stubbed his toe on the loose patio slab that ‘you’ haven’t got fixed yet? 😉

100% yes. We've now got a good selection of tradespeople that we can rely on.
We have a joiner and plumber in the family, and have found a good electrician who is prompt, tidy, reasonable and transparent with pricing. DHs best mate works in a carpet wholesalers and we have a good fitter on hand. My best friend's DH fits windows and doors. We also have a roof repair guy that turns up the same day and is so reasonable. Our plasterer is great, busy but can always fit us in. Our kitchen fitter is so good, his finish is amazing but he does take a few days longer due to his perfectionism.

Lol! I am with you OP. I relocated to a new area and fully renovated my house - I had the good the bad and the very ugly in terms of tradesmen. Eventually found a fantastic plumber, plasterer and electrician. My DP has also just used them for his house and they were great. I am moving again soon and know my life will be 100% easier with them on speed dial 😂

Please let me know when the house next door to you comes up for sale. I make excellent tea and am happy to provide biscuits too.

Oh yes and I found the most lovely local carpet fitter, he measures up I order the carpet online and he charges peanuts. I rarely tip but I always tip him for being so good. I do need a good carpenter though if anybody knows one in the Shropshire area!

Are you lonely and using tradespeople as a substitute for friends and family? I can't imagine thinking they're THE KEY to a happy life!

Perhaps read the OP's posts.....

I did, she said everyone in her family had died and friends are moving away.

No, not lonely, I am making new friends and still have some old ones around. But at the end of the day, life is better with good tradespeople 😉

I get it OP!
We've done 13 years of refurbing 3 houses back to back.
I'm SO relieved we're now at the point that we barely need a tradesperson again - just as there is a major shortage of them, they'll only work for £thousands not £hundreds (and good on them), and the cost of materials has gone mad.
I thought recently how great it would be to employ a 'handyman' on a permanent contract for 1 year (like other people pay for a nanny) to fix every job in the house!

Well my house definitely annoys the shit out of me I’ll give you that! And I do agree it’s often impossible to find either good or bad tradesmen. Grateful for my lovely roofers working right now in a heatwave. Who didn’t overcharge us like tradesmen can at the moment.

It might not be the thing that makes me happiest but it does make like easier!

We now have an older, brilliant but grumpy electrician and a young, super cheerful plumber, I love them both.

Less often needed but also amazing are the pirate roofers who we've used twice. They're proper roofers but look like pirates, I have to warn people before I recommend them. As the captain told me, "I know I look like a meth head bab, but I know me roofs".

I'm sorry for all your losses, I hope decent tradesmen at least make life easier for you.

I'm with you OP. Happy house, happy life.

We moved back to my hometown because my mum has a network of years. It's a parade of 70-somethings with square pencils behind their ear turning up and making hard jobs look easy. It has been one of the absolute best things about returning to our roots, because our house is nicer than it ought to be given that we are scruffy millennials.

We do try to maintain it and are getting better, but there is a sheer degree of skill and experience in a lot of this stuff that is about years of experience.