The A-Team: Sheldon

My general contractor has pretty much reinstated my faith in man.

Before I started this process, everyone I talked to said watch out for contractors: they're always dishonest, they're always a nightmare, everyone fights with them. With Sheldon Superville, everything has been the opposite.

This is Sheldon. He's in charge of a list of major tasks, and we're bound together by my mortgage, which has his payment written into it.

Back in October, while I was negotiating the price of the house with its sellers, someone broke in and ripped out all the copper pipes and the water meter. The sellers blamed the break-in on us, and said we couldn't come back into the house until I owned it. But I needed a list of repairs and costs for my mortgage company, so Sheldon sat with me through several coffee-shop meetings constructing prices based on the home inspection document, and whittling down the numbers until we got to the monthly payment I needed. That went on for months, until I finally closed on the house.

Since then, Sheldon has cut me breaks on unexpected repairs, made trips to home depot and lumber yards to pick up things for the jobs Travis and I do, and sat in L&I for many unpaid hours to get permits that I could have gotten myself. When we found out that I was going to have to pay upwards of $4,000 to rewire my whole house instead of the planned $700 for some electric patching, he offered to pay the electrician himself, in construction labor, until I had the money to pay him back. And when we found out that he would have to rebuild my neighbor's chimney in order to rebuild mine, he tracked down the neighbor, got her on a conference call with me, convinced her to pay him partially for rebuilding her side, offered to let her pay him on a payment plan, and eventually operated at a loss to fix her chimney and patch part of her roof. All of this, without complaining, without fighting, without dumping stress or conflict on my shoulders. I mean, he tracked down the neighbor himself. Who does that? Is that normal for contractors?

We've stood around on the porch drinking Heineken and talking about his kids. He has five. Like my mom, he wont let his daughters watch music videos at home because of the values he believes they promote about women. He sing-songs his messages into my voicemail. He gives Travis and I presents. He's offered to chaperone us and our friends to Philly reggae clubs. He has a fleet of family from Trinidad in Philly. He has nothing but love for his diva cousin who walked into my house with a turquoise do-rag and a poodle over his shoulder to see if Sheldon could set up speakers for the party he was having that night. To which Sheldon then invited us. His dream is to raise enough money to be able to go to flight school- to become a helicopter pilot. If I had the money to send him there, I would.

I recommend Sheldon to everyone.