Hiring a contractor is one of the most consequential decisions you’ll make as a homeowner. Get it right and the whole experience is exciting. Get it wrong, and you’re dealing with a blown budget, a stalled project, and work you eventually have to pay someone else to redo.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the difference between a great contractor and a disaster usually shows up before you ever sign anything — if you’re asking the right questions. Here’s what I’d want to know if I were the homeowner sitting across the table.
1. Are you licensed and insured and can you prove it?
In Tennessee, a general contractor performing work over $25,000 is required to hold a state contractor’s license. Ask for the license number and look it up yourself through the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance. It takes two minutes and it’s worth doing.
Beyond the license, ask for a Certificate of Insurance that shows both general liability and workers’ compensation coverage. General liability covers your property if something gets damaged during the project. Workers’ comp covers you if someone gets hurt on your property — and no, “everyone’s a subcontractor” is not a valid reason to skip it. If a contractor hesitates on either of these, that tells you something.
2. Can you show me completed projects similar to mine?
A portfolio matters, but so does what’s in it. A contractor who’s done great bathroom work isn’t automatically the right person for a 600-square-foot addition. Ask to see finished photos — not just in-progress shots — of projects that are actually comparable to what you’re planning. Better yet, ask if you can talk to a past client or see a finished project in person. Most homeowners who had a good experience are happy to help.
If the portfolio is thin, always mid-construction, or they pivot to “we can handle anything” without showing you evidence of this specific type of work, pay attention to that.
3. Who will actually be on my job site every day?
This is where a lot of homeowners get surprised. You meet a sharp, experienced person at the consultation, feel good about the company, and sign the contract — and then that person disappears and you’re dealing with a rotating crew of subcontractors that nobody seems to be managing. When something goes wrong, you don’t know who to call.
Before you hire anyone, ask directly: will you personally be on site? If not, who is? What’s their role, how long have they been with the company, and how do I reach them if I have a question? A good contractor has a clear answer. A vague one — “our guys know what they’re doing,” “we check in regularly” — is not an answer.
4. How do you handle permits and inspections?
A legitimate contractor pulls permits. That’s not negotiable. Permits exist to protect you — they require inspections that verify the work meets code, which matters for your safety, your insurance, and eventually your resale. Work done without permits can become a real problem when you sell, refinance, or file a claim.
In Nashville, the permitting process has gotten more layered in recent years. It takes time, and it needs to be factored into the project schedule from day one. If a contractor tells you they don’t usually pull permits for this type of work, or that permits just slow things down, walk away. Avoiding permits means avoiding accountability, and you’ll be the one holding the bag later.
5. What does your payment schedule look like?
How a contractor structures payments tells you a lot about how they run their business. A reputable contractor doesn’t need full payment — or anything close to it — upfront. They have supplier relationships, they have cash flow, and they’re not financing your project on your deposit.
A fair payment schedule typically includes a deposit at signing (somewhere in the 10–25% range), progress payments tied to specific milestones, and a final payment when the work is done to your satisfaction. That last part matters: the final payment should be held until your punch list is complete, not just theirs. If someone asks for 50% or more before a single thing has happened, or requests cash, those are serious warning signs.
6. How do you handle change orders and unexpected issues?
Surprises come up in renovation. You open a wall and find old wiring that has to be addressed. Demo reveals subfloor damage nobody could have predicted. In older Nashville homes especially, this is just part of the process.
What separates a good contractor from a problematic one isn’t whether surprises happen — it’s how they’re handled when they do. Change orders should be written, priced, and signed by both parties before additional work begins. If a contractor is vague about this process, or gets defensive when you ask, that’s worth noting. The most common source of end-of-project cost disputes is change order work that was never documented in advance.
7. What’s a realistic timeline, and what could push it?
Any contractor can give you a completion date. What you want to know is whether they’ve actually thought through the things that could affect it — permit timelines, material lead times, subcontractor schedules, weather if there’s exterior work involved.
In Nashville and Hendersonville right now, lead times on certain materials and trade availability are real variables. A contractor who builds those factors into the schedule from the beginning is being honest with you. One who promises an unusually fast timeline to win the bid, or who can’t commit to any timeline at all, is setting you up for a frustrating experience either way.
8. Do you offer a warranty on your work?
Any reputable contractor should stand behind their work after the project is complete. At BEC Innovations, we offer a one-year labor warranty — that’s fairly standard in the industry. The important distinction is that labor warranties cover the quality of the installation. Materials are typically covered separately by manufacturer warranties.
Ask what’s covered, for how long, and what the process looks like if something comes up after you’ve made the final payment. A contractor who stands behind their work has a clear, specific answer to this. One who responds with “we guarantee our work” and nothing else probably hasn’t thought through what that actually means in practice.
9. How do you communicate throughout the project?
This is the question people underestimate the most, and it’s the one that affects your daily experience more than almost anything else. You should know upfront: how often will you get updates, through what channel, and who’s your point of contact when something needs a fast answer?
At BEC, we manage projects through a platform that keeps clients informed without them having to chase us down. That proactive communication is something we take seriously, because most of the stress in a renovation comes not from the work itself but from not knowing what’s happening. Pay attention to how responsive a contractor is during the sales process — if they’re slow to return calls before you’ve hired them, that pattern doesn’t improve once the project starts.
10. Have you worked in my neighborhood or on homes like mine?
This matters more in Middle Tennessee than most people realize. Nashville has a lot of older housing, and it comes with quirks: historic overlay requirements, small or irregularly shaped lots, aging infrastructure, and permit processes that vary depending on where you are and what you’re doing. East Nashville alone has a dozen scenarios that require genuine local knowledge — century-old bungalows with original plumbing, infill lots with tight setbacks, conservation zoning that affects what you can build and how.
A contractor who works regularly in your area has already encountered most of what’s under your walls. One who doesn’t may price the job based on assumptions that don’t hold once the work begins. It’s a fair question, and a good contractor will have a straightforward answer.
At the end of the day, these ten questions will eliminate a lot of the wrong options. But the final call also comes down to something harder to quantify — whether the person sitting across from you actually listens, takes your project seriously, and makes you feel like a client rather than a transaction. The best renovations I’ve seen happen when the relationship is built on trust before the first tool comes out.
Whether you’re dealing with post-damage repairs, considering a bathroom renovation, or wish to design a home addition in Nashville or Hendersonville, and want to work with a team that can answer all of these without flinching, we’d love to hear from you.
BEC Innovations is a licensed, female-owned general contractor serving Nashville, East Nashville, Hendersonville, and Middle Tennessee. We specialize in kitchen and bathroom remodeling, home additions, and screened porch construction.
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