What's a contractor as opposed to builder

jazza-g

Watched an episode of Homes under the Hammer and a man that had bought a property said the quote from a local builder to do the work was too much so he was going to use contractors

What is a contractor?

DirectDebacle

Try using this.

Mistral001

A contractor and a builder usually means the same thing to people in the building trade and building professions.


Generally on these shows you get people who are novices to building and do not know the terminology. The presenter probably should have asked the person to explain what he meant. He could have a meant he was going to hire trades individually himself when he said use contractors. we will probably not know for sure.

EssexExile

It means he'll select & employ individual tradesmen himself rather than let a company do everything.

"Contractor" is a meaningless word, you often see people when asked what their job is say "contractor". Plastering contractor? Electrical contractor? Financial advice contractor? It tells you nothing.

Mistral001

EssexExile wrote: »

It means he'll select & employ individual tradesmen himself rather than let a company do everything.

"Contractor" is a meaningless word, you often see people when asked what their job is say "contractor". Plastering contractor? Electrical contractor? Financial advice contractor? It tells you nothing.

When I started in a building-related profession 30 years ago the word "contractor" was almost exclusively used to refer to a building contractor. However, now that you get single-trade firms such as firms of plasters, painter-decorators etc. the word "contractor" now refers to these as in "plastering contractor" as you say.

Certainly there are some self-employed tradesmen who call themselves contractors but that is because some people are a bit sniffy about the building trades and "contractor" sounds better to them than "self-employed plasterer".

jazza-g

Thanks to all for the explanations