Licensed, bonded and insured, and the name on the license is the man at your door.

Mike holds a general contractor's license with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Plan Commission and Building Authority. That is the line on his own credentials page, and it is the first one in the list.

What matters about it is who carries it. On plenty of jobs the licensed name sits on a letterhead while somebody else shows up with the tools. Here it does not work that way. Mike does all of his own work, so the person who looks at your sagging porch beam, writes the estimate and runs the saw is the person the license belongs to.

That also means one phone number and one person to ask if something looks off a week later. You can read how that plays out across the full list of services, from painting to kitchens and baths.

Mike carries a Mutual Surety Bond with Western Surety Company. A surety bond is a three party arrangement. The contractor makes a promise to do the work properly, and a surety company puts its own name behind that promise.

For a homeowner, the plain version is this. In general, a bond gives you somewhere to turn that is not just the contractor himself if a licensed job goes wrong. It is a different thing from insurance, and it is why you will see both words on the van.

If you want to know how a bond like this applies to your particular project, ask when you call for the estimate. Every job gets a written estimate before any work starts.

Per Mike, he holds a policy that has been in effect for over 30 years and has never had a claim against it. He puts that on his own credentials page, and it is the line he stresses most.

In general, a contractor's insurance is what stands behind a job when something unexpected happens on a ladder, a roof or a kitchen floor, so the cost does not land on the homeowner. A policy that has run for three decades without a claim says something about how the work has gone in that time.