Finding artisans for renovation projects in France

Finding Workers and Getting Quotes

Introduction : Making a list of artisans : Getting a quote : Accepting a quote : Payments and price changes

Before reaching for the yellow pages you need to ask around the neighbourhood. Anyone you know or meet and has lived in the area for a while will have recommendations (and dire warnings) to offer you. Listen to them - personal recommendations are the best way to find good workers.

However, it is often difficult to separate those with a vested interest from those making a genuine personal recommendation based on work they have themselves had done.

Many people, stranded in a foreign country, ask the person they know best - the estate agent that they bought the property through. This is unlikely to be the best way to find good workers, and those recommended will frequently be a relative or friend of the estate agent. If you must follow this route, then insist on speaking to existing and former clients of the individual, in private, about their work. Even then, they will probably be new arrivals like yourself and won't be in a position to properly compare quality of work and price paid.

The old lady who lives in the house down the road or the ex-pat who has lived in the region for a few years are your best chance of getting a sensible and valuable  response.

If someone recommends a whole series of English builders to you, their recommendations should be ignored. In a French town it is just about possible (although usually unlikely) that the best electrician, or plumber, or mason, is English. Anyone who suggests that ALL the best workers in town are English - no chance. They have chosen their workers based on the language they speak rather than their abilities and that is not the best way to get good work done at a good price.

Next thought - never deal with any builder, be they from France, the UK, eastern europe or anywhere else, that is not properly registered in France and can show you a SIRET number. Problems with the work, problems with guarantees and insurance, problems with tax when you sell up. It just is not worth it. This is not because I have a great moral opinion on 'working on the black' - the French bureaucratic system for starting a business and employing people is such a disaster that many people are more or less forced to work in the black economy - it is simply  a question of quality of work, price paid and tax issues.

One slightly easier possibility is to choose 'teams' that always work together, or a building contractor who will subcontract the individual parts of the project themself. All the builders will have their preferred electricians and so on. If the different teams all know each other, you will probably find that they let each other know about delays and problems over a drink in the bar. Having chosen your mason you can ask him who he usually works with,  or alternatively ask other people nearby who have had work done for details of the teams who worked for them.

See here for the process of actually getting quotes (devis) from artisans and workers, and general advice about accepting them.