The upholstery looks good but I'd rather not mention in this forum who did
it. The workmanship of the owner and his two workers is great but as a
businessman he is a disaster. It took 4 MONTHs for the interior, primarily
because the guy spent my deposit finishing jobs in front of me, and then
strung me along promising what he would have done the following week. When I
finally figured out what was happening 6+ weeks were lost. I spent the
remainder of the job being in his shop 3-5 times a week making sure he was
working on my plane. (He was always taking short side jobs just to keep the
doors open). One week I and the other person who had a plane in the shop
wrote checks directly to the workers to cover payroll so they would keep
working. I would go and pick up material, paying for it then myself, and
deducting the cost from the balance due. The carpet distributor insisted on
CASH as he had been burned before by my guy. He wouldn't even take MY check.

While this might be an extreme example it doesn't appear to be that unusual
in the upholstery business. My lesson learned is you need to check out not
only the workmanship and quality of the shop, but also get RECENT references
of jobs he just completed, and talk to them. If you can, don't follow the
industry standard practice of 50% up front, and 50% at the end. I would try
to pay sufficient to cover the material up front (20%?) and then have some
way to very the material is bought and warehoused. Then pay in 2-3
increments based on progress, withholding about 20-25% to pay at the end.
This will help provide you protection that your material has been bought,
and it should help the owner by easing his cash flow problem caused by
holding 50% to the end. Hindsight is 20/20.

Paul
N63PB
Happy but wiser



-----Original Message-----
From: Lancair Mailing List [mailto:lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Colyn
Case at earthlink
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 8:05 PM
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: [LML] Re: Photos

Paul,
    looks nice!   who did the upholstery?    ....and how did it go?

Colyn



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