I am just so frusrated right now about my family room and my contractor. The first frustration started last week. We thought he was going to start Monday of last week but it was all a misunderstanding and I accept that now. But when we hung up after me asking him where he was, he told me to not to hesitate to call him whenever I needed to. He had already told us he would lay our carpet if we wanted him to. We had been out looking at carpet and getting carpet and installation prices. So I tried to get ahold of him to see what his installation fee was. Had to leave a message on his voice mail. Next day I did the same because he didn't call me back. Next day I tried to leave a message but it said his mail box was full. This was on Thurssday. I tried everyday up until Sunday and it was still full. He was supposed to be coming to our house the next day at 8 AM to start and we still couldn't get him.

So I finally get him on Sunday, he said he had been out of town. But he said he would be at our house at 7 AM. My husband was up then and we finally left at 11 AM because he still wasn't there and of course his voice mail box was full. So he finallly arrives at about 2 PM. Says he had an appointment at his own house that he couldn't miss. Come to find out he 'flips' houses and he is living in it while flipping it and he had an electrician come in.

So Monday was kind of shot. They did final demo work and planning. So when he left I said 'see you at 8 AM, emphasizing the 8. So he comes in at 8:25 AM and immediately says that he forgot his tool box and goes home to get it and back at 9. Short break at 11. I have to leave for an ultrasound at 12:30 so he says that would be a perfect time for him to leave for lunch. I tell him I'll be back at 1:30. He comes back at 2:30 and leaves at 4:30.

So again I say see you at 8 AM and not 8:25 tomorrow morning, emphasizing the 8:25. He comes in at 8:10 and leaves at 8:30 and gets back at 9. Tells me he's leaving at 11:15 for lunch. Then the big problem comes. I call him at 1:45 and ask him if he thinks he is done for the day! He says well no. I'm at the dump. Since he hasn't built anything yet at my house, I think he went to his house, got things from his own flip and took them to the dump on his lunch hour from my house. So he finally gets here at 3:30, car over heated sitting at the dump!

So we have a TALK. I told my husband that I would do all the talking. I had seived all day and had it all written out what I was saying. I even had the chair put right in my line of fire so he had no choice but to sit whre I could stare at him. I told him that if he had a boss that he would have been fired right on the spot if he left for lunch at 11:15 and came back at 3:30. He said well you know you are my boss. And I came right back with' I have had several people that have told me that I should fire you right now.'


I told you this was long


I also told him that we are a couple reaching retirement age. I had to empty a 401K with possible tax and penalties. I am on SSD and my husband makes a lousy tech salary and maybe to some people $4800 isn't a lot of money but to us it is huge and we had entrusted that to him and asked him if he was still going to make the same kind of commitment to us as we did to him.

By this time he was squirming. I finally let my husband talk and the main thing he wanted to add was what it was doing to me. His girlfreind has MS so he knows what its like. So instead of leaving at 4:40 tonight he left at 6:30 but there still isn't any drywall up!

I know I should have fired him but I am just so frustrated and didn't want to go through all the interviewing and getting estimates again. We did that for two weeks. Plus he has cut a lot of drywall. It is just sitting there. We hired him because he had the same kind of vision that we had for the family room and what he told us of his work ethics we really liked. We thought they were very strong. He had wonderful referrals. Maybe he paid them.

OK, that's the end. I did feel much better after I talked to him.

Welcome to the world of hiring contractors!

So far tho, it doesnt sound too bad yet.

I hope you didnt pre-pay the contractor, or at least didnt give him all the money up-front.

Wait till you come home one day, and you see him in your room, working hard on a nice big cabinet, sawing, sanding and painting...only to find out that the cabinet he's working on, in YOUR home, is for another job he's doing!!!

We had a contractor working on our old house in the mid 90s. He had remodeled my aunt's house (my late uncle had hired him a few months before my uncle died of pancreatitis) He'd done a great job on my aunt's house. By the time he got to our house, he was deep in debt from embezzling from his own company to pay his gambling and serious drug addiction debts.

Our house was gutted and not finished for probably over a year. (made housebreaking my dog TinyMonsters when he was a puppy a lot easier...no carpet for him to go on)

His employees were drug addicts too. Actually caught one snorting coke in our house one afternoon (and out the door he went after we told him to leave)

He did finally finish the remodel in our house, but he never did finish enclosing our front porch. He built a brick wall (wrong) and then abandoned that job. (taking about $2000 of my dad's money with him, with unfinished work) Right after he abandoned us, our carpeting that we'd ordered finally arrived. It was the last thing to be installed after all the woodwork and walls were finished.

The carpeting guys spent the day putting our carpeting in, and I told them the story about how he quit and didnt finish work that he'd been paid for. When it came time to pay them for the carpet, they asked how I wanted to pay for it. (parents werent home, my dad had told me to use his credit card)

They said I could pay by check, credit card, or I could CHARGE IT TO THE CONTRACTOR. I said "Let me think....I think we'll charge it to the contractor!" They smiled, did their paperwork and told me the total was about $900 (I think)

My dad got home a bit later, and was really pleased to find out that I'd gotten about half of his money back from the contractor because I'd charged it to him instead of paying it outright on a credit card.

The contractor called a couple of days later...told my dad "I see you charged the carpet to my account.", My dad said "Yep!", and the contractor meekly said..."ok, I guess I deserve that." and we never heard from him again. Never saw the other half of my dad's money either.



At the house we're at now, we had contractors finish off the basement store room into an office for my dad, renovate my mom's bathroom to include a handicap accessible shower, and remodeled the guest bathroom to put in a walk-in bathtub.

Every one of those contractors did something annoying, or probably criminal. (someone working on the basement office wandered off with my dad's Makita drills, just about all of his brand new Craftsman screwdriver set, and a few odd things like my dad's cast iron skillets)

The walk-in bathtub guy was just insane, kept telling us not to watch him because people watching him makes him hurt himself. (total whackjob!)

and the guy who redid my mom's bathroom for her shower, didnt show up for days on end, and left the water turned off in the bathroom for several days, while my mom was recovering from knee surgery. (we had to help her to the guest bathrom whenever she had to go potty) He was the nicest contractor we had. He fixed things that werent part of the job, and never charged us for fixing those things.

It sounds horrible!!!

Put everything in writing and get a signature and verify ID just in case.
Somewhere i saw that you should pay in thirds - a third to start, a third @ halfway point and final third when job is finished and acceptable to you.
If not acceptable you can renegotiate the final payment or he can do it to your approval..
from court tv shows

hubby, kids & I do all our ow remodeling & repairs
Well the kids helped before they got jobs anyway.
But we get a real sense of accomplishment doing a project ourselves.

When I bought my first ever house, it came with a huge problem.

I had to have the foundation repaired (I am scared I'll relapse telling this story again, omg stress).

So I had a couple contractors come in to look (after we tore the finished walls down, and found crumbling bricks). 1 in particular didn't say the job would require lifting the entire house to fix the issue. Said "I can do the 2 walls where the damage is, replace the old windows with new windows, and install a humidex for approx. $15,000". Considering the other contractors quoted $25,000+, this sounded like the best route to go.

So turns out my neighbor even knows the contractor (my neighbor used to be his boss!), so I think I have a good guy to do my work.

So this involved digging all around the house, hammering out the old blocks on the walls that were literally caving in, replacing the blocks, waterproofing... with the house on jackposts. But my contractor assured me, "This will take a week tops". Ok, I think I can manage 1 week...

To get an idea of the work (beginning and partially finished) here's a series of photos we snapped: Basement from hell!

To make a long story short, the house wasn't done in 1 week. It was over 2 months. They even had to come back and jackhammer around the inside foundation, because the foundation was still leaking! Luckily, he did stick to his original cost, and at the end of the day, it was worth it (I made a nice profit on selling), but it was daily calls to him to get his butt over to do his job.

I lived in a busy area, near a busy street, with a foundation that was removed for an extremely long period. I made him install a lock on my basement door. I didn't sleep for more than 1-2 hours the entire 2 months (and I was still working then).

I'm almost certain that the amount of stress that I went through at this house, and during the repair process/dealing with this contractor, was what triggered my MS onset . Goodness!

I'm so sorry you've had such a rough time. Now you know why people do it themselves.

We did.

The only things we hired out were some drywall - dh's friends did that - the pool - we had to threaten legal action, it took all summer to get the concrete deck installed - and the roof/gutters, which went really well.

With the roof, we asked neighbors who'd had that contractor do their jobs. I didn't even know those neighbors, but you could tell they were the kind of people who woudn't have put up with any nonsense. Plus, I hit it off with the bossman right away.

You're probably already thinking this Doydie, but I'd tell that guy one more chance then I want my money back. No more screw ups period. Threaten to lawyer up.

We have a contractor just like this. He turned out to be a very good friend and sometimes does things for free. Yea, we have to do things on his time but his work is really good. He's also my neighbor and lives behind me. But oh let me tell you when he first worked for us we had so many fights you'd think we were married! I think I fired him twice before we settled on a better working relation. lol

Like you, I didn't have the energy to interview new contractors that would most likely come in and say he did the job wrong or something. I am glad we worked it out.

Good for you for laying down the law with your contractor. I hope he takes you seriously.

I agree with everyone who said for you not to pay ahead. Make sure if you are doing progress payments that he has really completed as much as you have paid for in case he "disappears".

I, too, had the basement from hell like dmplaura. In fact, her before pictures look just like mine. My contractor took his original 2 week period of time and stretched it out to about 6 weeks or more. I had racoons running around in my basement one night!! He kept pulling off my job to work other jobs and lying about it.

Then, one day we asked him for a quote to use his bobcat to move some dirt and instead of giving us a quote, he just did it while we were gone and didn't even really do what we wanted. At the end of the job, he tried to bill us $300 for that. I said "no way". It wasn't part of the original contract, he never gave us a quote or a change order and we would never have agreed to pay that amount of money for him to do what he did. I paid him the balance due on the contract and not a penny more!

He threatened to put a mechanic's lien on our house. I told him to go ahead and try because he had no documentation that it was ever a part of our contract. I knew my rights because I work in the construction industry and he figured out that I wasn't going to back down. It's a shame because the guy did good work but he was a nightmare to deal with.

New Hampshire STINKS for contract workers! STINKS I tell ya. We called to have a deck installed when we moved here. the first 8 didnt even show up for the esitmate. Before you say it, I arranged them through homedepot. They say they use local contractors to pool from, and were very apologetic, and would pull the next name out of the hat. FINALLY guy number 9 shows up, and is about 80 years old. quotes us on the phone an average. Gets to our neighborhood, sees all the houses on the other end of the street are water front, and now the price is 3x what it was on the phone. He wants to use trex, and special screws, with special sona tubes...Guy number 10 shows up and his goes 2x when he shows up. Only wanted a smaller deck, not attached to the house...

long story short, we had a neighborhood deck raising. We supplied the pizza and beer, and the supplies. We started a help your neighbor watch on the street. That weekend it was our deck, next weekend was pauls landscaping, and then someones boat dock...it worked out great in the end, but in New Hampshire, you have to learn to take care of it yourself.

Dej, that's a great idea! Sounds like you're blessed to live in such a great community

Way to go Doyd for nailing him to the "chair". It is stressing when your home is in disarray. Keep after him and can't wait to see the finished pics.