All Forum Posts by: Danny Lee

@Paul Daniels Thank you for your response. I am not sure how it got miscontrued that the my attorney is friends with the contractor, which is not the case. Typically when you bring on an attorney, they would check to make sure that there is no conflict of interest, to avoid issues such as the one that got brought up in the thread. At this point, I am not even sure the contractor has legal counsel.

I do understand the whole point of cost and time for materials and measuring. I am okay with paying some value above the cost of materials for this, as I understand there is time taken out measure and figure out how in this case the cabinets would fit into our kitchen. However, the kicker is right now as I have another contractor looking over the cabinets, there are no measurements left behind, and panels and filler are missing. So honestly, any upcharge above the material cost of the cabinets really should not be in the ballpark of $8000. That also does not change the fact that somehow the cost of the almost finished master bathroom managed to be inflated $1800 from the original statement of work cost. Again, we made the mistake of paying almost 50% of the total project work, with only about 20% of the work done. That extra 30% should cover any cost of materials and labor. From your perspective, do you think I still owe more just because I sought to terminate the contract?

Great advise on the $1,000 worth of work a day regarding hiring contractors, and that is a very sound benchmark to go by. That definitely is something I need to keep in mind moving forward. Looks like I ended up hiring a handyman in this case.

I do have cameras set up on the property, so I am a bit less worried about vandalism as opposed to legal penalties. I will keep everyone updated.

I think there was some confusion in my previous response. I actually tried settling from the $2000 with a significantly lower offer than $2000, and in turn the contractor came back to my lawyer for $1500. The lawyer understands that I want to move on from this guy as soon as possible which is why he advised on settling. However, I don't even know what the $1500 is for at this point other than a "termination fee", which obviously is not on unsigned contract.

@Daniel Gonzalez Funny thing about your response is after this weekend, he did reach out again to my lawyer stating after discussing with his counsel he will lower to $1250. Just like you said. Will keep everyone reading posted on what happens!

@Daniel Gonzalez

As an update, our lawyer spoke with the contractor, and now the contractor said that the settlement price is $1500. He believes we breached the contract (not signed) by prematurely terminating it. There wsa no termination clause, which I should have caught as a red flag before we moved forward with work. Nevermind the fact in the timeframe specified in the contract he was not even able to complete 1/5 of the work that was supposed to be done. As he was already a few thousand ahead, I still feel that this amount is not justified.

As he increased the price of some of the line items in the statement of work to get to an amount owed, this really feels like a last minute cash grab before riding off.

For anyone who has experienced a similar situation, should I try fighting the lien via arbitration if I am notified of the construction lien? If the lien does get approved, is my only recourse to sue to discharge the lien?

@Daniel Gonzalez - I do agree with you on the lien portion. The cost to file one already eats into the amount owed significantly, so from my perspective it does not seem to be worth the time and money. This looks to be a last minute cash grab, so who can predict if this contractor will want to go through the hassle to file one.

I totally agree on timeliness, communication, and honesty. In hindsight reviewing over the contract, there are so many clauses that are just bad news.

@Natalie Schanne Thank you for the response! I did not know that the cost of filing a lien is that much! After this piece of information, I did some additional research and after a filing a Notice of Unpaid Balance to the county clerk, he will need to request arbitration. You paid $500, but the fee has gone up to $750. Doesn't seem cost effective to spend that much for a claim that's only a little over double that amount, and proving a lien would be an uphill battle. I believe NJ law now has extended the period of filing a construction lien to 90 days of last working on job site, so there is still at least 3 months to wait out to see if he would pull such a stunt. Again, based on your information and my lawyer's take, this will be tough. Again, the contract was never signed on our side, so that would also make filing a lien very difficult.

The cabinets are from cabinets.com, so I can definitely look this information up. I did speak with customer service there to see if I can match SKU on the boxes that we have, but she said we need to know the width and make of the model and use the website to determine the estimated cost of each cabinet. She also mentioned that it is common practice for contractors to mark up this line item to include the measuring and design of the cabinets, so it should be expected for there to be a mark up from the cost of cabinets. Not 18k high, but it would be extra on top of the cost of cabinets.

Unfortunately, this was our first remodel so I made numerous mistakes, and never got receipts for supplies. I tried asking, but the contractor was never transparent about this. Fortunately only cabinets and flooring were purchased from his side, and we are in the clear regarding flooring. We provided materials ourselves for everything else.

Sorry to hear about your own horror stories, I am surprised you were patient enough to wait out 9 months for a rehab. I hope they at least gave you a full day for the day the crew was there. I was lucky if the contractor stayed for 3 hours. The old adage about speed, price, and quality and picking 2... my contractor couldn't even manage a single one.

Will keep everyone updated!

Hello, we had hired a contractor back in September to gut and renovate our 3 bathrooms and kitchen, as well as apply 600 sq ft of flooring. The contract stated timeline is an estimated 8-10 weeks. As of January, we barely hit the punch list portion of the first bathroom. We paid probably about close to 50% of the entire project (our mistake to learn from).

Other than being slow and not hitting any timelines, there was a period of about a month when the contractor just did not show up. After January, he showed up to work on our property for about a grand total of 4 hours after 2 weeks.

I had a lawyer draft up a letter to terminate the contract, which was successful. However, we were sent a final invoice of $2000, where cabinets were marked as $18k (these are cabinets from cabinets.com, not customized or anything special) and there was an increase in the cost of finishing the bathroom. This obviously is a final push for a cash grab, as we had paid 50% and did not receive 50% of work. I was going to chalk this up as an expensive learning experience, but annoyed that he wants more money after terminating the contract. Furthermore, my wife never signed the contract, so I am unsure of how much can be enforced here.

With the $2000 invoice, the contractor is now threatening filing a Notice of Unpaid with our county clerk, and likely will file a lien. I am working with a lawyer, but wanted to know my options on fighting this as well. We are based in NJ, so wanted to know how much leverage we have in this case (and how much we can leverage the Consumer Fraud Act in this case). Is this worth fighting or is this an expensive lesson?

Any advice is appreciated!