Live and Learn

Many of you know that we added onto our house and remodeled it. We started the process over a year and a half ago. What was supposed to be a 4 month project turned into a year and a half nightmare. I am writing this so others don't make the same mistakes we did.

We did everything you are supposed to do.

- get multiple bids. We even looked at doing the general contracting ourselves.

- don't hire just any Joe on the street.

- check out references and the BBB for complaints.

We did all this and in the end got involved in what I like to describe as a dateline special. We found this contractor on the parade of homes and fell in love with the detail, design and craftsmanship on the homes they built. It was exactly what we wanted.

We signed the contract in August 2011. Yep I said that right. Remember it's supposed to be 4 months. After months of waiting we got the permit and broke ground in October 2011. Things started to move then. We got our crawlspace put in and they started to frame up the new addition over the garage. By thanksgiving we had the new stuff put up and a lot of the framing done.

We were supposed to be done in February of 2012. I knew that it wouldn't be done by then but we had hope that by April we would be done.

In hindsight there were clues that something was going on

-the HVAC guy told me that they weren't the reason that it was taking them so long to get our furnace stuff in it was our contractor.

- the HVAC guy didn't know we were supposed to have a new furnace and AC unit.

- we kept getting the same response from our Project Manager that the subs were on other jobs and would be coming in the next week.

- the hardwood floor guy couldn't do our project but his brother was going to help us out.

- out front door that we ordered in October never arrived and was always the wrong one. -a lie

-our garage door was only being made in batches and was taking a long time- a lie

All while this was going on we had work being done here and there was just enough work being done to satisfy us and pacify us.

By march we knew it wouldn't be done. But we were getting so close, we had faith it would be done soon.

I will spare you all that went on and just give a run down.

- in august we started receiving Mechanics Liens on the house. Mini lesson on liens. State law allows sub contractors to go after homeowners with liens if they don't get paid by the contractor. Well the liens were meaning our contractor wasn't paying his subs and they wanted their money.

At this point we had paid a good portion of the bill to the contractor.

- fast forward to October. Not really any work was done. We were fortunate to get our garage door installed and carpeting in the loft. All spaces were now useable.

-we had four more liens placed on the house of over 35,000 dollars.

-the project manager was fired

-the company let it's employees go and closed it's doors.

-the owner filed bankruptcy.

We are going after the company to try to get a judgement in court and hopefully we can get some cash back from the states recovery fund. But we will not know that until December 2013.

There is a criminal investigation going as we aren't the only ones that were swindled by these people.

Valuable lesson. Do your homework and pay the subs directly. If they won't let you do that don't hire them.