Man, that foreman story stings but I gotta push back here. Asking every customer for half up front is how you lose the good ones before they even sign, and honestly the bad apple you ran into in Papillion is the exception, not the rule. Most folks who hire custom cabinets have money tied up in their house and they want to see you start before they hand over a fat check, and if you demand it cold they just call the next guy on the list. Better move is a small deposit that covers your material order, draw payments tied to milestones, and a written deal that says if they stop paying you stop working and keep the deposit. That $900 lesson was about no contract and no paper trail, not about how much you asked for up front. So what actually protects you better, cash in hand or a signed agreement that spells out what happens when they go quiet?

The real cost of that farm stay was your whole afternoon at a roundabout with no shade, which sounds like a prison sentence with plum jam as the reward. My rule is if the walk to the room takes longer than the shower you'll take in it, you picked wrong. Six bucks a night is a great deal until you're counting buses like a castaway watching for ships.