Who’s Actually Going to Be at My House? (And How Do You Know They’re Doing It Right?)

Thomas Williams, All American Renovations – Elite member of James Hardie™ ALLIANCE · Metro Atlanta and Middle Georgia

Chris Sineath. He’s the project manager on your job, he’s at your house while the work is happening, and he’s the person you call if something’s wrong on a Tuesday. Before him, you’ll hear from Caden in our office. I’m there the morning we start. After that, Chris runs it — and that’s on purpose, not because I lost interest.

I get asked some version of this on almost every sales call. Sometimes it’s polite — “who will I be working with?” Sometimes it’s direct — “are you going to be here, or are you going to disappear after I sign?”

It’s a fair question and most contractors answer it badly, because the honest answer sounds worse than the lie. The lie is “I’ll be here the whole time.” Here’s the true version.

Who Do I Hear From First?

Caden, in our office.

He’s the first call after you sign. He handles your scheduling information, and he works out placement with you — exactly where you want the material stacked, where the dumpster goes, where the porta potty goes. People underestimate how much that matters until there’s a thirty-yard dumpster sitting in the wrong half of their driveway for two weeks.

Then he keeps you updated as things arrive. Material delivery, dumpster drop, porta potty. Small stuff. But it’s the difference between a truck showing up unannounced and a truck showing up when you knew it was coming.

Are You Going To Be There, Or Do You Hand Me Off?

Both. I’m there at the start, and then I hand you off to a named person.

The morning your job begins, there’s a meeting at your house. I walk Chris and the installers through the job in person — what’s being done, what’s different about your house, what I told you we’d do. Everybody standing in the same yard looking at the same wall.

After that, Chris manages it. I come by when I can, and most of the time I’m somewhere in the area and I do. But I’m not going to tell you I’m at your house every day, because I’m not, and you’d find that out in week one anyway.

That’s the part other contractors won’t put in writing. The owner isn’t running your job day to day. What I can tell you is that the owner briefed the man who is, on your driveway, before the first board came off.

Is It The Same Crew On Every Job?

No. And I’d rather explain that than let you assume otherwise.

We run two siding crews, three gutter crews and one main roofing crew. Which one is at your house depends on what you’re having done and what’s running when.

But “different crew” doesn’t mean “strangers.” Most of these guys have been with us five to fifteen years.

• Siding: Servando, Fernando
• Roofing: Rene, with Armando as lead man
• Gutters: our legacy crew is Rafi Senior and Rafi Junior — a father and son, and Rafi Senior has been with me close to twenty years. Now his son is taking it over. Same goes for David Senior and David Junior. Rafi and David are brothers. We also have two full time employees that work for us as well. Jhon & Hernando. You might meet any one of these crews on the job.
• Paint: Sergio, twelve to fifteen years — and his son, also Sergio. It’s a family business.

Two father-and-son pairs, and in one of them they didn’t even bother changing the name. That’s not an accident of hiring. That’s what it looks like when people stay.

So the promise isn’t that you get the same faces every time. The promise is that you get the same standard, and that somebody is accountable for enforcing it. There’s a lead man on every job responsible for the work being right. There’s a project manager checking it against a written list. And Chris or I come look at it while it’s happening.

If it’s wrong, it comes down and gets installed again. That’s the only solution to a problem like that.

Are These Your Employees, Or Subcontractors?

Both, and I’d rather tell you which is which than let you assume.

Gutters we run with our own people. Two of our gutter installers are employees of All American Renovations. We also use two subcontract crews on gutters, and both of those crews have worked for us for around fifteen years.

Everything else — siding, roofing, windows, paint — is run with subcontractors, each one under an independent contractor agreement with us.

I know how that sounds if you were hoping to hear “all employees,” so let me tell you what it actually means for your house.

These aren’t crews off a list. Look back up at that roster. Most of those names have been with us five to fifteen years, and Rafi Sr. and David Sr. close to twenty. The relationship is measured in decades, not in jobs. The reason the same people keep coming back is that we send them work continuously and they’d rather keep it than lose it over your house.

Everybody who works on your house carries insurance

Every subcontractor holds their own workers’ compensation and general liability. That’s a condition of working with us, not a nice-to-have.

And we carry our own workers’ comp and general liability over the top of theirs. So there are two layers of coverage on your project rather than one.

🔑 That’s worth asking any contractor you’re considering, and asking it in exactly that order: do the people physically on my house carry their own workers’ comp and liability, and do you carry yours as well? A surprising number of companies can only answer half of that, and an uninsured man falling off a ladder at your house is your problem in a way most homeowners never think about until it happens. What “licensed and insured” actually means walks through how to verify both halves yourself, in about ten minutes.

And the part that doesn’t change either way

Who’s responsible is us.

You have one contract, and it’s with us. The schedule is ours. The quality checklist is ours and it gets run whoever is holding the nail gun. If something’s wrong you call Chris, or you call me — you don’t call a crew.

That’s the whole reason to hire a company instead of five separate trades. If the answer to “who do I call” is ever anything other than one phone number, you’ve hired the wrong way round.

How Do You Actually Know They’re Doing It Right?

Because there’s a checklist, it has pictures on it, and it gets run four separate times before your job is finished.

This is the part I’d most like you to know about, so I’m going to show you the actual thing instead of describing it.

Here’s what our project manager checks, on your siding, every time:

1. Starter strip installed on the first course
2. All siding nails going into studs
3. Aluminum joint flashing being used and properly installed, overlapping the board below
4. Flashing over windows and doors, with a hem
5. Cut edges being primed
6. Caulk not being tooled if it’s ColorPlus
7. No nail heads exposed around the lap — nails shot below the 1¼-inch area
8. Nail heads not set too high, which makes boards kick out and go loose
9. Nails not blown through the face of the board
10. Trim nails used at a minimum
11. If trim nails are being used excessively, it’s because of no starter, bad nail placement, or blowing through boards — corrective action taken. If the whole wall has to be taken down and redone, do it.

That last line is printed on the sheet. It’s a check box somebody has to tick.

Most of that list isn’t our invention. The fastening, the flashing and the clearances all come out of James Hardie’s published installation instructions, which anybody can read. What’s ours is checking it four times.

The instruction at the top of that list is: walk the job like this was your own home. If it’s wrong, it needs to be fixed.

There’s a second list that runs before anybody picks up a nail gun — material staged and not stacked on top of itself, dumpster in place, packages physically opened and counted against the purchase order, rotted wood confirmed after tear-off, and the installers reviewing and agreeing to the James Hardie best practices before they start.

Why four times instead of once at the end?

Because a checklist you run at the end is an inspection. A checklist you run four times is a process.

If a nail placement problem gets caught on day two, it costs somebody a morning. If it gets caught at the final walkthrough, it costs a wall. We’d rather spend the morning.

And the installers have a copy

This is the part that surprises people. The men doing the work are given the same sheet, so they know exactly what they’re being checked on.

There’s no gotcha in it. Nobody gets marked down for a rule they never saw. The test is published before the test.

The whole idea came out of a book called The E-Myth Contractor, by Michael Gerber — specifically the story about how McDonald’s broke down building a burger into pictures on a page. Bun. Bun and lettuce. Add the patty. Add the sauce. Simple enough that it comes out the same every single time.

Now, your house is not a Happy Meal. Every house has details that are different from the one next door, and anybody who tells you otherwise has never taken siding off a 1970s ranch in Middle Georgia. But the installation techniques and methods don’t change. That’s the part you can systemize, so we did.

What If I Don’t Like Something While The Work Is Going On?

Call Chris. He’ll either fix it or explain it — and honestly, sometimes it’s the explaining.

If it’s something he can handle, he gets with the crew, looks at it, and makes the correction. If he can’t resolve it, he brings me in. We meet at the house, go over it, and make an action plan.

But here’s something worth saying out loud: it’s not always about it being wrong. Sometimes it’s about it being right, and nobody explained it to you.

I’ve had a customer unhappy about the eighth-inch gap between the siding and the trim. I’ve had one unhappy about the one-inch clearance we leave off concrete here in Georgia — patios, driveways, sidewalks, decks, roof surfaces. The manual prints a range of one to two inches; one inch is the figure for our climate. Both of those look like sloppy work if you don’t know what you’re looking at.

They’re not. We treat both as required, and they come straight out of James Hardie’s own installation instructions. (Ground clearance is different, and bigger — six inches anywhere the siding could contact dirt.)

And maybe I didn’t do a good enough job explaining that up front. That’s probably where I learned to be as detailed as I am about best practices now — including writing all this down where you can read it before you ever call me.

What If Nobody Shows Up For A Week?

You’ll hear about it before it happens, and the reason is usually the painter.

Here’s how the schedule gets built. When siding starts, we call Sergio and tell him where we are and how long the installers expect to take. He gets lined up for the point we think we’ll be ready. Then we tell you what that point is.

It doesn’t always hit. I use one painting crew. Sergio has been with me twelve to fifteen years and he’s the best painter I’ve ever used. He runs one or two crews depending on the size of the job, and sometimes he’ll put both on a house to get it done.

I would rather get behind on the paint schedule than put an inferior painter on your house and have to come back. My dad used to say experience is the best education, it just costs so much. I’ve paid that tuition on a painter a time or two.

In practice, paint usually starts within about a week of siding finishing. That’s the real number, not a promise I’d have to walk back.

And if that week turns into something else, it is Chris or Caden’s job to call you beforehand — not after you’ve noticed nobody’s at your house.

What I’d Tell You If You Called Me

• Ask any contractor who your point of contact is, by name. If the answer is the company name instead of a person’s name, that’s your answer.
• Ask to see their quality checklist. Not whether they have one — ask to see it. Ask how many times it gets run and whether the installers get a copy. There are four more questions like it that no badge on a website can answer for you.
• Ask what happens when something is installed wrong. Listen for whether they’ve thought about it before, or whether they’re constructing an answer while you watch.
• Ask whether the people physically on your house are employees or subcontractors — and then ask who carries the insurance. Both halves. The crews doing the work should hold their own workers’ comp and general liability, and the company you signed with should carry its own as well.
• Ask how long those particular crews have worked for them. Not how long the company has been in business. How long these people have been showing up.
• If something on your house looks wrong, say so the day you notice it. Half the time there’s a reason, and you’ll sleep better knowing it. The other half, it’s a lot cheaper to fix on day three than on day thirty.
• Don’t take “we’re really careful” as an answer. Everybody is careful. Ask them to show you what careful is written down as.

The Reason Any Of This Exists

I’ll be straight with you: we made mistakes. Mid-2000s through about 2010, we made plenty of them.

That’s why the processes are what they are now. The checklist isn’t a marketing document. It’s a list of things that went wrong once and are not going to go wrong again — written down so that a project manager who wasn’t there in 2008 doesn’t have to learn it the same way I did.

If you learn from a mistake, it’s a lesson. If you keep making the same one, it’s just a mistake.

And it’s why we stand behind our siding work for thirty years, and our roofs for ten. Not because thirty is a good number for a brochure, and not because we are the cheapest way to get siding on a house — we are usually not. Because we know what it takes to install it right, and we know that when it’s installed right, following those best practices, you’re not going to have a problem.

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