You have three options: 1. Keep taking the projects on as they come and deal with it. 2. Make working on projects like this your niche and charge extra. 3. Sto

You have three options: 1. Keep taking the projects on as they come and deal with it. 2. Make working on projects like this your niche and charge extra. 3. Stop taking on these projects and seek out only greenfield projects. We, too, take on projects like this a time or two per year and can usually up-sell them on some refactoring by explaining to them the longer-term cost in maintenance. If the existing works are sufficiently FUBAR, I generally won't take the project on unless they agree to some restructuring of the project. Our team's current mix is generally around 60% brand new projects, 20% maintaining code written by my team, and 20% maintaining others' code.