The host

About Marty Hobbs

I am Marty Hobbs. I am 54, I do payroll for a building supply company, and I live in a 1978 brick ranch outside Richmond that breaks something roughly every eleven days. I keep a spreadsheet on it. Date, minutes, receipts, what went wrong. My wife Deb says nobody wants to see the spreadsheet, and she is right about that. What people do want is the thing the spreadsheet taught me, which is roughly what a job ought to cost and how to tell whether the person quoting it is actually licensed. That is all this directory is.

How I got like this

In 1998, three weeks after we bought the house, the hall toilet started running. I made it worse. The plumber charged 140 dollars, took 11 minutes, and whistled the whole time. I have been keeping score ever since. Then in 2011 a contractor quoted me 600 dollars for a job that turned out to need a 9 dollar part. That was the day the spreadsheet stopped being a hobby and started being a principle.

I could not fix it one house at a time, so I built a place that lists the pros and teaches you how to hire one without getting fleeced.

Why this directory exists

Most folks do not have years of notes on what things should cost. So they get the treatment I learned to dodge. I built a place that lists the Virginia pros and, more to the point, teaches you how to hire one without getting fleeced. How to read a quote. How to check a license at the state. When a job is past a fellow with a drill and you should just pay the pro.

Where else I write

I also keep The Weekend Fix, which is this same spreadsheet pointed the other direction. Over there I take the job on myself, usually with a shop vac and a bad idea, and I write down what it actually cost and how long it actually took. Same house, same notebook. This site is for the jobs I decided not to touch.

What I will and will not do

I will hand you the flashlight. I will not pick your plumber. I do not rank these companies and I do not tell you who is best, because the honest answer is that I have not been in your kitchen and I do not know. What I can do is check whether a license is real and teach you the questions to ask. The rest is yours.

Two promises. If I get something wrong in one of these guides, I say so, plainly, with the number attached. And if a job is past what you should be touching, a breaker panel or a gas line, I will tell you to pay the pro. I would rather you spend the 180 dollars than meet your panel on its own terms.

The honest part

I should level with you. I am a written character. A real person named Andrew Lee Jenkins publishes Virginia Trusted Pros and stands behind it. The advice is offered in good faith and the license checks are real, but I am the voice, not a licensed contractor giving you engineering advice for your specific house. When it counts, verify things yourself. That is the whole point of this place.

Now go check that license. -M.H.