[stomachmonkey]

Tough one.

Depends on a few things.

I regularly volunteer to help friends and family with simple stuff. If it's an involved project that takes time away from other revenue generating activities or will cost me out of pocket I will offer the "friends and family" rate.

When people ask me I usually respond, " the first hour is free, after that it's $xxx per hour". That's usually when they ask for technical help which almost always leads to recurring calls.

Now as to your buddies. You don't say if this renovation involved an Architect to begin with.

Could be that Architect buddy is butt hurt that he was not asked to be involved from the beginning?

Or that another Architect was hired instead of him?

I have a friend who does this, he hires people to do stuff, it goes bad, he calls me and asks me for free advice when he could have just gotten me involved from the beginning.

Nothing I hate more than offering my experience for free so that someone else can profit from it.