Contractor job was not good should I pay?

[Bailey Coleman]

I bought a SFR in a decent neighborhood on the east side. I am an out of state investor so I had to manage the project renovations while not being there. The contractor I hired did not do a good job and I feel like they are screwing me over with half *** work. I already paid 50% of the agreed price and I still owe him like $800. Is it okay not to pay them because the work was not good to the point where I do not think the house is going to appraise for what I want it to. They also took too much time doing the renovation and threw away all the reuse-able material that I bought away in the trash. This experience with this contractor has been a nightmare. They also left trash in the house. I had to have a friend take everything out. Has anyone ran into a problem were the contractor did not perform. I am thinking about not paying them due to these reasons.

[Ryan Normand]

Wow. Those pictures... yikes! I didn't know Mickey Mouse lived in Ohio :)

You may have a leg to stand on for not paying. Those pictures fall far far below reasonable workmanship standards. But because it sounds like the whole arrangement was off the books with an unlicensed guy it gets kinda fuzzy. It's up to you if you want to risk the a** ache of small claims court or just pay the $800 so he'll shut up and you never have to see him again. It would be a different story if you owed thousands of dollars.

There's a valuable lesson here - the cheapest bidder always costs more in the long run. The silver lining is that you learned this on a relatively small job and you can probably recover from it pretty quickly if you get a GC who know what they're doing to come in and fix what this guy messed up.