Contracting company threatening to place lien after shoddy work

[Johanna Athas]

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum. I really have no idea which category this would fall under, but this seemed like the most appropriate one. Here is our situation that I could really use a bit of advice on:

Last year (fall of 2015), we had a remodeling/restoration company perform repairs/remodel to our home after an insurance claim as a result of significant water damage. They installed new kitchen countertops, cabinets, and flooring throughout most of our home. We paid them half of the balance up front and our mortgage company is holding the remaining balance from our insurance company. This company's work was so incredibly poor that they kept having to come back at various times over the past year to fix things that were coming apart, breaking, and just overall very poor workmanship. After they did the work on our home, we found out from several people how horrible this company is and that they are notorious for extremely low quality work, being very sneaky and dishonest, and ripping homeowners and their insurance companies off, but they were who our homeowner's insurance company's referral service recommended we use when we filed our claim. We have been dealing with this horrible company for a little over a year now because their work was so horrible and, like I said, they've kept having to come back to repair various things as a result of their exceedingly poor workmanship. Now, the hardwood flooring in our living room is splitting and buckling in several areas and the same wood flooring in our dining room looks just plain awful as several of the planks sit up higher than others. It's actually a tripping hazard! We don't think they put in an appropriate expansion gap when they installed it to allow the wood to expand and contract. Additionally, last year when their painter was here painting the kitchen walls after the new cabinets were installed, he put painter's tape on the sides of two of the cabinets in our kitchen and when he peeled it off, it took the finish right off of these two cabinets, making us think that they ordered much cheaper, much lower quality cabinets than what we had ordered and what they charged us for. They have refused on multiple occasions to replace the cabinets that were damaged, despite our repeated requests, and they just put some ugly, tacky pieces of floor trim/molding over them as a bandaid to hide the damage. The trim pieces that they put up do not even really match and it is a total eyesore! Our mortgage company has been made aware of these issues and they will not schedule the final inspection of their work to release the remaining funds until these issues have been fixed. They are doing this to protect us, the homeowners, which make perfect sense to me. We have informed the contracting company of this, so they are fully aware. Now, for the past couple of months, they have been threatening/harassing us on a regular basis with phone calls and by leaving notes on our front door and in our mailbox to put a lien on our property if we don't give them a date for the inspection, which the mortgage company will not even order until these problems are fixed.

Here is the catch. After doing some research, my husband and I now know that in our state (Maine), a mechanics lien MUST be filed within 120 days of the work being completed. If that is the case, they are WAY past that time frame as we signed the "project completion" paperwork almost a year ago, probably about 9-10 months ago to be more exact (we signed this prior to the issue with the hardwood floors arising and we thought that they were going to replace the damaged cabinets at that time). The last time they were here to do any repairs was when the project manager stopped by on his way home from work one evening in early September to apply some caulking to the kitchen tile floors where the grout was cracking and coming apart. We have been told by various individuals that minor warranty repairs due to poor workmanship on their part does not count towards extending their deadline to file a lien and that it goes by the last time actual significant work was done, and that the project manager stopping by for 15-20 minutes on his way home at the end of the day to fix something does not count as significant work.

I am literally pulling my hair out over this and am getting more and more angry with this company. I feel that they are just trying to bully/scare us into getting our mortgage company to schedule the inspection so that they can get their money without addressing any of these serious issues with their work. In fact, I just spoke with the contracting company this afternoon and the manager's exact words to me were, "I can't let this lien date pass." I KNOW that it has already passed since it has been well over 120 days since the last significant work was done, but I, of course, did not tell her that I knew this. Also, the office manager for this company asked me to call our mortgage company to grant her permission to speak with our mortgage company directly. I am NOT okay with this and neither is my husband.

Can anyone offer any advice? I am so sick of these people constantly bullying and harassing me and leaving notes on our front door and in our mailbox (they literally left them in both places more than once) and I am not going to give into them, because they need to fix their shoddy work! Our home looks awful because of them! It's actually embarassing to even have family and friends over with the way our flooring looks and with those two hideous floor trim pieces on our kitchen cabinets covering up the damage they caused!