To All Contractors Everywhere:
1. If you make a mess, clean it up. If you leave drywall dust, electrical wires or little metal fastenings, pick them up after you are done. I am not your maid.
2. If a new appliance, cabinet or fixture has protective plastic on it. Leave it. It is not up to you to remove. You may want the Ahhh effect of the owner who sees a room complete but if they are unhappy with something and you have to do more work, they won’t be happy when their tub is scratched.
3. Provide you and your workers (in a full reno) with toilet paper and cleaning supplies unless the contract specifies that these things will be provided for you.
4. Don’t use the owner’s tools, ladders or supplies. The contract assumes that you will provide these things for you and your workers.
5. Don’t smoke in my home. It may not be a home yet but it is not allowed by me or by the DOB. If you do, don’t be stupid enough to leave butts around or better yet set the architectural plans on fire.
6. MOST IMPORTANT: throw your trash in the garbage. I know you like a Red Bull or a big can of ice tea in the middle of the day but I don’t want your cans and pizza boxes hanging around at the end of the day to attract bugs and rodents. You’ve helped yourself to my box of contractor bags, use them.
Brownstone Cyclone 
Well said, Angela!
Sing it, sister! Agree 100%. Here’s a few more:
1. If you see a box, no matter how small, make sure it is empty before you throw it away. That little box may have something rather expensive and irreplaceable in it.
2. Before you claim that something can’t be done which requires the homeowner to spend countless hours jumping through hoops to change, you better be 100% sure it can’t be, or that the solution you’ve come up with will work.
3. Take your *%$# work boots off when you are walking on brand new floors, or put booties on. Provide your workers with said booties.
4. If you ask me to get something overnighted, you better use it the next day. If it sits on my counter staring me down as a symbol of financial waste until you finally use it, it’s only going to work like an abscess on my nerves.
I could go on and on…and on….
Your number 4 happened to us many times–rushing out to some vendor in Queens to get something that sat there unused for weeks.
I used to think that this was a modern day problem, until I lifted some of the floor boards in our 120 year old house. I found old construction detritus like scraps of wood from where the baseboards were trimmed, gobs of wet plaster that solidified into weird shapes and other miscellaneous junk. Turns out that event though the construction workers of the 19th century wore vests and ties, they were not any cleaner. sigh….
awesome. what a great blog you have going.
Oh my God, I am so over all of the above mentioned nonsense! How does one actually explain this to these people? It is basic common courtesy, and should not be an issue. I am in the middle of a renovation right now, and I am so angry about the trash that is left around. How can I be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and have to clean up after grown men? I feel so disrespected, it makes me so angry.