The more I hear about your great tradesmen, the more I wish I lived in Texas or you lived here! I have a website and in it I list service providers for my clients and friends (and my farm area).  It would be great to be able to promote some of your guys!

Bill...I don't know if you have a website....but on mine I have a page for "local services". I post any blogs I've done about local businesses on the page. Once a month I check the number of times someone has accessed a particular business through my web site (I have a stat counter on it) and I email each business with the numbers. Hopefully somewhere along the line it will lead to some business...

Having done many home improvement projects myself and flipping them, I have learned a lot about the trades, and that knowledge comes in handy when I hire contractors. I can speak their language. I can demand quality. I question them and offer suggestions as we discuss exactly how they are going to do the job. It makes me wonder how a person who doesn't know anything about the trades can hire anybody and feel confident about it.

Elizabeth, you're so right.  If you don't know what you're doing, you have no business contracting out remodeling and repairs yourself

You might check with a local property managment company like GTF in Dallas.  They know lots of vendors.

Robert, that's a good idea, and thanks for offering it.

Interestingly, the huge Dallas area real estate company, Ebby Halliday, Realtors, maintains a voluminouslist of people and companies that do about everything from cut grass to teach tuba.  It comes from Ebby agent recommendations.

I'll bet there are as many as 500 entries on the list.  Through good fortune, I have a copy of the list.

Of those I've called in the past -- primarily sole-practitioners -- I've yet to find one that was still in business.  So does that mean a business' chance to vaporize increases in direct proportion to its competence?  Probably not, but it's a thought.