Beyond Repair

"Fernando said he was going to issue him a hammer and drill and start paying him a wage," Claudia Alderman said.

Constant communication helped the job go forward, with Alderman calling Garcia at least two or three times a day.

"He'd ask where do you want the faucet, what type of bathtub do you want, which direction do you want the door to open?" she said. "I tend to be more hands-on, and Fernando likes that."

Word of Mouth

Stung by dodgy contractors in the past, many homeowners latch on to good help when they find it.

Donna Beuttell has peppered her Dupont Circle neighbors with fliers about a neighborhood handyman, Ariton Ismaili. She found an advertisement for him at the True Value on 17th Street NW last year and decided she would give him a try.

Where previous handymen wanted to jack up prices and were unresponsive, Beuttell said, Ismaili did exactly what she asked for on jobs such as replacing tile in the entryway. She called him early one morning after hearing a thump in her pipes. He was on another job, but he described how to fix the problem over the phone and said he could be there in minutes if necessary.

"He was so different from the others," Beuttell said. "He dealt with the issue itself; he didn't say, 'Oh, it also needs this or that.' "

Since she stuck 118 fliers in neighborhood mailboxes, Ismaili said, his cellphone calls -- and the number of house keys on his keychain -- have grown astronomically. He even asked Beuttell to hold off on sending out another flier so that he could catch up.

"It's very great when you feel friendly with customers and are also in business together," said Ismaili, 30, who came to the country seven years ago as a refugee from Kosovo.

Consumer groups and contractors agree that the key to a successful job is finding a common ground from the beginning. That comes mostly through a well-conceived contract that will prevent surprises down the road.

For customers, that means being realistic about what you can afford. For contractors, it's being patient with clients who aren't used to work being done in their homes.

"When you're remodeling, you're invading their sacred territory," said Everett Collier, president of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and owner of a contracting company in San Francisco. "It feels like the Visigoths have just come over the pass, and that can lead to a lot of stress."

Many homeowners say the best relationships stem from just knowing they can get someone on the phone.

Lisa Leathwood used Romenskii, the Maryland contractor, for renovations on three bathrooms in her Arlington home. At the end of the job, she and her husband actually told him he should charge more in the future.

It was the little things that distinguished him, she said: getting a discount on tile through a friend, calling with updates throughout the day, furtively chipping off a piece of sample granite when they couldn't meet him at the store.

Some clients give their contractors more than good references. For a job well done, Victor Mendieta got a $200,000 thank you.

An older couple in Montgomery County regularly called on him for house repairs, often for routine odd jobs such as changing light bulbs or moving furniture. When the couple decided to move to Florida, selling the house became a tough task.

Fed up with real estate agents and a protracted selling process in the late 1990s, they asked Mendieta to name a price on their house -- and took a couple hundred grand less than it was really worth, by his estimate.

The grateful couple has since died after their move to Florida, but he has a number of loyal clients who stay on his holiday mailing list and provide ample references. But with new customers, he said, there's a healthy amount of suspicion at the beginning.

"I have to tell them that we're here doing business; we're not here to rob or make good off of them," said Mendieta, of Unlimited Home Services in Bethesda, who has received gift certificates and home-cooked meals from clients.

Matt Johnson was so pleased with his U Street-area basement renovation by SCS Contracting that he had a barbecue for the crew.

"On Thursday or Friday I'd bring beer home -- after the power tools were disconnected," he said. "I mean, let's face it, they're crawling all throughout your house for a couple of months. It was a nice way to say thanks."