A two dollar outlet cover cost my client six weeks

We do make-readies, mostly paint and floors, and last spring a guy hired us to turn a downstairs unit in a little duplex he'd just bought. He'd decided to rent it to a voucher tenant because the last tenant paid him in cash three months out of twelve and then vanished. He wanted the government part.

So we do the unit. New paint, new vinyl, cleaned the vents, replaced the range because the old one had two dead burners. It looked better than my own kitchen. He walks it, pays us, we're done.

Inspection comes. Fails. Missing cover plate on an outlet behind where the fridge sits, and a window in the back bedroom that wouldn't stay up on its own. That's it. Nothing structural, nothing expensive. He fixed both in an afternoon, the plate cost about two dollars at the hardware store and the window took a piece of dowel and a new sash lock.

The part he didn't plan for was the calendar. The re-inspection wasn't the next day. It got scheduled out, and between that and the tenant's move-in paperwork he sat empty roughly six weeks past when he thought he'd be collecting.

He wasn't angry about it by the end. He told me the next unit he does, he's walking it himself with the inspection checklist in his hand before he ever calls anybody. I've started doing the same thing on jobs where I know the landlord's headed that direction. Costs me twenty minutes and it's the cheapest twenty minutes in the job.