Regarding confidentiality of customer information, a message from the owner:

I thought it prudent to write about an issue that has been in my thoughts a lot lately.

Lowe's has recently partnered with Porch.com. Porch.com is a marketing service. The electronic service that they provide is intended to match homeowners that are looking for home improvement contractors with contractors in the area that can do the work. It is similar to Yelp.com.

I found some of their marketing material at the Lowe's contractor desk and decided to create a profile on Porch.com for the Handyman business.

I like some things about Porch.com. The contractor can put up pictures of projects and provide a lot of information on the type of services that they provide.

However, there is one thing for which my gut feel, so to speak, was not good at all:

Porch provides a mechanism for new homeowners to discover who has worked at the address of their home. Part of this information is obtained by Porch through public record searches (i.e. building permits, etc.) I do not really have a problem with this because this is public information and can be obtained by anyone. However, Porch, very strongly encourages contractors to give them lots of information about jobs they have done, Much of the information they request is customer information that I consider confidential. They want to know how much I charged a customer for a particular job (like the projects that I post). They want to know the exact street address of the job (supposedly for the address search feature I mentioned). They do not want the customer name ( if they have the other information, I maintain that the name is easy to obtain).

In his gospel, Luke records the words of Jesus, " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Sometimes we call this the golden rule. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. Well, friends, I have to tell you, if I do business with you, I really do not want you telling strangers where I live and how much I paid you for the job. As the old folks that I grew up around used to say, "It just ain't none of their business".

It might be kind of cool to find out who, in the past, did work at a house I just bought. It might be cool to find out how much the previous owners paid for a repair. However, if they wanted me to know they would have told me. I could have asked before I bought the house. And, just because a particular contractor worked at an address in the past, does not really mean that this contractor will be a good choice for a future job. It does not even mean that the contractor did the work properly the first time.

A Porch representative contacted me by phone and very strongly suggested that I disclose this sort of information about my customers. I never intended to disclose any of this information. I have a very strong information security background from my previous career as a computer network security consultant, I was curious, so I asked for documentation detailing the internal controls, if any, that Porch implements to secure the potential vulnerability of this sensitive data. This should be in their internal data security policies and procedures. I was promised this information. What I got was names of contractors who have disclosed customer information to Porch. Porch wants me to contact these contractors for testimonials regarding how great it is to disclose sensitive customer information to a marketing company like Porch. Well.... No Thanks.

So, I strongly suggest that you, as a consumer, insist that personally identifiable information about your deal with your contractor remain confidential. I often use pictures and/or descriptions of the work that I do for customers as a marketing tool. Sometimes, I will give a broad description of the geographical area of the work, i.e. North Fayette County, GA.  However, I never disclose the customers name, address, nor any details of the deal (i.e. cost, time to complete, etc.) I am proud of my work but, your confidentiality is important to me as well!

Thanks for your continued business!  All of us at William Moore Lawn and Handyman Service appreciate your business and referrals!

-William Moore
Owner
William Moore Lawn and Handyman Services
678-702-4791
fayettelawnmoore@gmail.com

Custom Shelving Units

We recently completed a job involving the design, fabrication and installation of custom shelving units. The job was done for a home owner in Fayette County. The shelves now house a collection of LPs, 45s, CDs, and video DVDs.

This blog posts details the design, fabrication and installation process used on this job.

Before hiring us, the customer had a shelving unit for CDs that did not offer enough storage capacity and was not aesthetically pleasing. There was no storage in the room for his collection of over one thousand LPs and 45s.

This before picture illustrates the need for more CD storage.

This is a before picture taken that shows more of the previous inadequate storage space.

In the case of this project, the customer had a good idea of what he wanted and provided a drawing indicating his vision for the project.

Customer's initial drawing indicating the project requirements.

After meeting with the customer, we used his drawing and our notes from the initial consultation to create preliminary drawings and a cost estimate.

 As part of the estimating process we created some very preliminary drawings for the project.

CD Unit Preliminary Drawing

DVD Unit preliminary drawing

Album Unit Preliminary Drawing

We decided that three distinct units would be designed, fabricated, and installed:

LP or Album Unit

The album unit includes adequate space to house a collection of over 1000 LPs and Albums
This unit reaches floor to ceiling. The unit is about 13 inches in depth to accommodate the depth of LPs.

There is a 2ft. wide section of shelving that accommodates 45s  this section has a 3 inch lip on the front of the shelf.

The bottom of the unit is sized to accommodate the storage of guitar amplifiers.

CD Unit

The CD unit is the largest of the three units. It is over 8 feet in length.

The bottom of the unit is sized to accommodate the storage of guitar amplifiers.

This is attached to  the DVD unit in the corner of the room 

DVD Unit

The DVD unit is the smallest of the three units. It is a little over 3 feet in length. The DVD unit attaches to the CD unit in the corner of the room

Material:

The home in which these units were installed contains some beautiful hardwood floors. All of the interior doorways are trimmed in oak. Baseboards are made of oak.  All of the doors that we saw in the home appeared to be made of solid oak. Apparently a previous owner of the house was a woodworker and put a great deal of time into the trim and doors in this house. It was therefore, our intention to compliment the beautiful woodwork in this house with our shelving units.

The units were constructed of furniture grade materials. Pine and oak were used. All highly visible parts are oak.  Minwax Golden Oak Stain was selected to compliment the shade of stain on the floor and woodwork in the room. A rich and glossy finish was attained through the careful application of high gloss spar varnish. All of the stain and varnish was rubbed into the material with cloths. The rubbing ultimately brought out the grain of the wood very nicely!

In order to maintain a built-in and formal look, the units were trimmed with oak shoe mold and crown molding was installed at the top.

These are sample pieces that were provided to the customer before we began fabrication. This was done to verify that the finish and stain shade was acceptable. The top piece is oak. The middle piece is furniture grade pine. The bottom piece is oak shoe molding.

This is hardwood paneling that is in one of the rooms of the house

This is a sample of the hardwood floor in the home.

These are some of the pieces of the album unit during the staining and finish process. The material for a particular unit was stained and finished before fabrication of the unit began. These pieces were only left in the sun long enough for the stain to dry. Any longer in the sun would have presented a risk for warping of the material. By the way, the jeep visible in the background is not for sale...just a project that we have not had time to finish yet.

This is the completed album unit in our shop. 

The completed album unit just prior to transport.

The album unit in the house. The header pieces nor the crown molding had been installed at this point.

This picture was taken during installation. The first section of the CD unit is attached to the album unit.

Here the CD unit is completely installed and the Lovely Shane makes notes regarding the upcoming DVD unit installation.

This is another view of the CD unit and Album unit during the on-site portion of the installation.

These are some of the parts of the DVD unit during the staining process at our shop.

This is a section of the hardwood backing that we used on the units. This was taken just prior to the DVD unit fabrication.

The Lovely and Awesome Shane helping with the stain application process. This picture was taken in our shop.

This is a picture of some of the crown molding during the staining process.

This is one of the header pieces for the DVD unit.

DVD unit during fabrication

This is the Lovely and Awesome Shane with our finished product. Notice that the Album unit (in front of Shane) has been stocked by the customer, with a collection of over 1000 LPs and a bunch of 45s. The CD Section is partially stocked.

The Lovely and Awesome Shane literally adds a finishing touch here.

This is a picture of the completed album unit. The shelves are loaded with LPs. Notice the second shelf from the bottom
in this picture. On the far right, just past the divider support the edge of the 45 storage area is visible.

This picture shows the corner. The DVD unit on the right is secured to the CD unit on the left. A very nice piece of oak material connects the units together leaving no visible gap.

In this picture the detail of the individual shelves is visible. The Spar Varnish gives the piece a nice, rich glossy appearance. The outer edges of the shelves are capped with oak shoe mold. The Spar Varnish  makes the piece more water resistant and easier to clean.

This picture shows the quality of the material. This is the material before the staining process has been done. The piece on the left is a 1"X 8" piece of furniture grade pine. The piece on the right is a 1"X 12" piece of furniture grade oak. Great care was taken to position and cut the pieces so that the prettiest grain was visible on the face of the finished piece.

In this picture, William is sanding a piece of oak that will become a side piece for the Album unit

In this picture, we were pre-fitting the hardwood plywood back to the album unit. The plywood at this stage is not permanently attached and has not been stained. You can clearly see the beauty of the material that we used for the back of the units in this picture.

In order to verify the fit, we borrowed a few representative pieces of the recordings that would ultimately be stored on the shelves. This is a picture of one of the LPs during the fitting process. 

We are grateful to have been given the opportunity to work on this project. We have a satisfied customer and we are really proud of the finished product.

If you have a need for customized cabinets or shelves, please contact us! We would love to do another one of these projects soon!


-William Moore
Owner

William Moore Lawn and Handyman Services
fayettelawnmoore@gmail.com
678-702-4791