All Forum Posts by: Bryan B.

 Thank you, Mike! We are gathering information now. The contractor wants to meet with us today to "collaborate" on what is going to be told to the city because he wants to down-play a lot of things it seems. For example, claim no plumbing was done in our new laundry room and that all they did is swap out a sink, claim that we thought they broke concrete in the master bathroom but we were just misunderstood, and so on, so that the city will drop the permit requirement for them. They're pushing this idea that if we don't do this, the project will 1) get much more expensive for us since they will require us to pay to get all of their work permitted and 2) it will leave us without a house for multiple more months while they try to figure out how to get things done.

They've also said some things that terrify me. As a direct example, "routing a new power wire from the garage to the kitchen was quoted at $1,500, as you know. This is because we were taking a path around beams and other things. If the city wants us to permit, all of a sudden we have to go through beams, and that's going to cost a LOT more money for no reason since we shouldn't have to do it this way." To me, this is a sign they are probably cutting other corners as well and we have the feeling they were trying to avoid permits because work isn't up to code.

As of now, it's the city on top of them... and the city is furious. They've also straight up lied to the city inspector's office about some stuff. For example, the type of fence they installed isn't allowed as per our city ordinance so it needs ripped down. This was enacted over two years ago but we told them it happened this past April since that's what a memo I read said. The city actually notified us that the GC lied to them and claimed "I installed this fence in April when it was allowed so it should be grandfathered in." Even though we didn't even start talking to the GC until August and the fence wasn't done until October. And now GC is trying to blame us, saying we should have told him pine wasn't allowed, when 1) we wanted cedar, all conversations that are logged said cedar, and 2) we thought we were getting cedar, and 3) we didn't realize it's our job to look into every little thing he's doing to tell him whether he can do it his way or not. Furthermore, he's now saying since these permits were all required, it was our job to have looked into this and we should have told him that they were needed...

It's just a huge mess. We are meeting with him today though and then an attorney on Tuesday.

He's not licensed with the state (according to the state, GCs do not require licenses here, nor do they require insurance). He did have an insurance policy, but it expired two months into our renovation (1.5 months ago) and is no longer insured. I brought it up with our city to see how we report it and they said there's nothing to report since Texas doesn't require either of those things and it's up to each GC whether they want to register/be insured. Which just completely baffles me. Subcontractors that are actually doing work are required to have both though (it seems to be set up this way since the GC doesn't actually build anything, they just hire out the work for others I guess?).

 Thank you for this. We've started organizing our documentation already and have a meeting with an attorney planned for this upcoming week to go over things. Your situation may have been a bit different since they had something to go after; based on what I'm seeing through some research, it looks like he already has a lien against his personal house and his company is in his brother's name (neither of which have assets to go after that I'm seeing). He's also currently working on jobs where he's pulled over half a million dollars in just the past few months and according to him, he has no money left, so I'm under the impression he may be taking all the payments and doing something to hide them or drawing them from the company account as soon as possible so that nobody can try to go after a receivership or anything.

I'll gather some photos but it looks like:

1) Painting interior of house

2) Some broken tiles here and there

3) Wiring from garage into the kitchen for the stove

4) Fixing some lights/fans that do not work properly 

5) Window screens for all windows (solar screens)

6) Flooring gaps

7) Painting stairs

8) Sealing the glass in the new shower since it has gaps where the door is

9) Rehanging the door in upstairs bathroom, front door/back door as all three have major gaps and/or are digging into the frames due to being hung improperly

10) Repairing holes in walls/doors from their renovation work

11) Windows need sealed properly (they replaced all the glass and now a lot of windows no longer open because they put the seals on improperly)

And some other things that may not be too much overall. Our big issue now is that the city is saying they potentially want us to:

1) Rip out the entire garage door so they can see the framing (since he removed the load-bearing wall and they want to see that it's done properly), 

2) Rip out the 9' shower so they can see the "shower pan" and verify that the piping he altered in the cement is okay

3) Rip up drywall all throughout the house to verify that the plumbing and wiring he's already gotten done are up to code

4) Rip down the fence and rebuild it from scratch with cedar instead of pine

5) Rip up the laundry room so they can follow the piping from one side to the other as it goes to the sink

6) Remove a lot of the ceiling to verify wiring since so many new lights have been added and existing ones were moved due to completely renovating the kitchen

It's honestly the permitting that's going to cost the largest amount since almost everything he did needs to be shown to them. On top of this, he says the permits themselves are going to run $4k or more. He's asking us to cover that part now and what we supposedly still owe him and everything (that's where the $20k comes from) and then depending on how much they actually make him redo he wants to try to negotiate that with us since he said he otherwise can't pay for it and shouldn't have to since he believes permits aren't needed to begin with.

 I wasn't sure how to respond to you and the first post all at once so I went ahead and did another information dump just above this one to help shed some more light. I don't believe he undercharged us at all. Some more examples/details are in that post. Thanks!

 Thank you for the response! I'll try to gather some photos of the work done but most is already covered up -- for example, the new shower is fully completed. In the case of the shower, they dug through the concrete along a 6-foot length to "cap off" the existing line so that they could extend it to the other side of the room and add in a second shower head (we now have one on both sides of the shower). It's one of the areas where he's fighting the city, stating that he doesn't need a permit. The garage door was also completed, and a lot of things are partially finished. RIght now we're trying to figure out how to respond to him because he sent us a message saying we need to meet in person to figure out how things are getting paid for since he has no more money and the city is not happy. As for now, I've gone ahead and attached the original contract. All specifics were on "FreshBooks," and he was unknowingly editing this without us knowing. Everything that was on it has gone up in cost as we went along. Even after him stating that we had our final bill, he's still added many thousands for things he says he forgot or missed and wants the money for that (this is excluding the latest addition of around $20k he wants now to cover his permits and such, which you'll see in the contract are all on him, but his language makes it seem like if we don't cave, he's going to have to walk since he can't adhere to the city's requirements without more money to fix the things he's done wrong).

A lot of this also covers things from the second responder's post and I wasn't sure how to quote both at once, so I'll add in some more details in case it's needed. We originally started with a contract of $69k. So far we have paid him $121k (plus we have covered material costs, lighting costs, and some other things -- all-in, we're about 130-135k in so far, twice the original agreement, not including the thousands on hotels and damage that has been done to personal belongings). With some things, for example, we asked about redoing our closet. We got a quote for $7k and decided we did not want to do so. According to our contract, he needs a change order. We notified him just two days after inquiring about the closet and he said he could no longer remove it from the list because he had already ordered the materials and it was too late. It was almost a month later before someone came over to measure the closet and then two weeks after this before anything started happening, so we are under the impression that the materials were not pre-ordered (and how would they have been if he didn't have all the details?). With our laundry room, we specifically asked for a diagram showing the changes he was planning to make before doing anything. When we came to the house next, the wall was already busted out and he stated that work had already started -- and had we known what types of design changes he was making, we would have rejected it because the laundry room now juts out into the dining room and it's no longer usable. We have many cases like this. Or the garage door, we had the amount told, we paid it. A couple weeks after the work was completed, he then told us he needed another $450. He has never given a change order. He has never told us the cost increase until everything is done and it's too late. There are so many things we wouldn't have done because we did not expect to be clearing out our savings/investments/taking loans due to all the price increases that we thought were too late to argue. Even as far as electric, he's charged us well above what was expected due to having to send out so many electricians (case in point: first one hung lights but didn't hook them up, second just hard wired them into the wall with no switch, third had to go through and undo a lot of stuff to get things working correctly, and he's using things like that against us by saying it should have been done the first time... even though this is all by HIS subcontractors). Or a restroom remodel, it's a small one and he said $6k was more than enough for a solid remodel. His demo crew busted a pipe, which leaked all over the second floor. He had to hire an emergency plumber to cap it off and seal it. After this, the roof started pouring out water (it turns out the AC line runs through that sink so they capping it, they were backing up the AC). All of a sudden, that 6k was no longer enough for anything but a basic remodel and then he even increased that more to $8k (it was for tiling a small restroom, swapping the tub for another tub, two sinks, and a toilet). Every time something has had to be redone because one of the subcontractors messes something up, we end up with an increased bill on something else that he says he forgot to tell us about, which leads me to believe that he's likely trying to recoup funds from those.

We've also found that he's been working on a multi-million home for 6 months and has, in the time he's been working on our home, started having to redo a lot of work on theirs since they're unhappy with the work being done due to contractors doing a shoddy job. The timing of that coincides with the increases in our cost (that house paid $450k for their reno and after contacting the city it's in, he and his contractors are not registered there, nor have any permits been pulled on that house either, but without the address they can't really do anything).

He's also trying to charge for things out of our control, such as charging $225 for a trip charge for his plumber that was supposed to set up a sink for us. When the plumber was sent out, there was nothing to do because the countertop wasn't here since the GC (the one charging us) still hadn't paid them for it and they told him they would not deliver until he paid. But he charged us for the trip regardless, even though it was entirely on him, saying that his plumber has to be paid for every trip...

Also, I'm sorry for the overload of information. There's just so much going on, and at this point I'm literally sitting in a room that is 46 degrees, bundled up under blankets, because we have already dumped so much into this project that we have to figure out how to even cover our bills now, but we did it due to fear of being sued for not giving him all the money he kept asking for and/or not having a house to even stay at. I legit don't know how to handle paying an attorney right now. And the GC knows we don't have money, as we told him $15k ago that we had already hit our cap and couldn't add more. But then it became a necessity to get our kitchen back, and to pay for increases for things already done, etc., so we took loans to cover it since we figured we legally owed it and it's better than losing our house.

Attached is the full contract we originally signed. Pretty much everything within that has been broken by him already.

Hi all, I'm going to try to spell everything out the best I can without going into full specifics of things like numbers. We are in a bad situation and really don't even know where to go from here.

Earlier this year, we started a major renovation project on our home (above $100k, but let's use 100k as a base since it makes the percentages easier). In the beginning, our contractor was easy to work with, was very intimate with the job, etc. After a couple of weeks, however, he stopped being as involved, and a lot of things started going wrong. Now, as per our contract, we were to pay 30% up-front, 40% after demo, 20% at 75% mark, and 10% at the end). We had followed this to a T for the first two payments, and he requested the third payment a bit early, stating he needed it to continue work. So we gave it. At this point we had given 90% of the payment and it was a bit over half-way done.

At this point, work started to get... for lack of a better word, bad. All of a sudden things start going wrong. For example, as per our agreement and chat, we had specific things we were expecting that weren't followed through on, from materials to setup and design. This has been met with things like "I honestly forgot we agreed on this" or "Oh, I forgot to do tell them," which was then followed by asking for more money since he keeps saying his quote was based on his flawed view of what we agreed upon and it would have cost far more to do the right thing. For example, our 140' foot fence was agreed upon to be cedar, and it was done using pine (at a cost of $8k, despite originally saying it would be $6.5k, and only notifying us about the price increase after it was finished). We called this to his attention and he said he forgot we said cedar and that he would have had to charge another $5k+ for material alone. Through the entirety of working with him, he's asked for one payment after another to pay his subcontractors, so we've, based on the $100k model, paid $98k of it to him already and there's still a lot left to go on the work.

We've honestly been a bit lenient on things because we've been stuck out of our house for over 3 months during this process (we've spent over a month in hotels alone due to the massive amount of work being done and not having a kitchen for 3 months and 2 weeks now).We just want our house back.

Now, we've been called out and been asked for proof of the permit/inspection on our fence because the one he installed was not allowed by our city. Upon going to the city to get the permit, I went ahead and decided to pull all permits for work being done (things like a 2-door to 1-door garage conversion, with load-bearing wall removed, kitchen wall removal, new pantry created, turning the old pantry into a laundry room with new plumbing and a sink, extending a shower and tub into a 9' shower, and a lot of other stuff, including a lot of electrical changes like a new outlet and new light fixtures). The city notified us that no permits were ever pulled for anything. They also notified us that nobody was ever signed up as a contractor to work on our house, so now we were called out for it.

He kept saying to both us and the city that he doesn't need permits for any of the work that was done and doesn't know why they are even asking. In the end, he agreed to sign up as a contractor and pull permits. But now he's upset because of the work that has already been done and the city wanting to see behind the walls and under the new shower (and inside the garage wall where the load-bearing wall was removed to verify stability). He is pushing the idea that he trusts his workers and the work they do and so getting these permits is just a hassle for everyone and keeps saying the only reason the city cares is because "they want their money" and that it has no other purpose.

Today, he's reaching out to tell us that the city is making him rip down our fence and replace it with cedar. He says the permits he's pulling are also adding costs and that he doesn't have the money so he wants to work with us to figure out how to pay for these fixes to his work. For the fence, he wants another $5k now, again repeating that, despite our conversations talking about cedar, he thought we didn't care about the material (but wouldn't the onus be on him regardless, even if we were open to fencing type, to figure out what's allowed as per city law?). We purposely did not want pine because our last fence (before the law was changed) was pine and it had one issue after another due to weather here. He's also asking for the cost of getting permits and licensing for all of his workers, stating that he never billed us for any of this since it wasn't supposed to be needed for anything (based on what I can tell, he wasn't even planning on one for running a new power line from our breaker box to the kitchen for a double-stove). His words: "interior work doesn't need permits, only exterior work."

We are at a complete loss of what to do now. He's essentially asking for another $20k for a job we've already paid well over 100k for (and has increased costs many times along the way: for example, our stove was supposed to be included, then it was "$1100" for the wiring, then when we agreed it jumped to $1500 because he forgot it needs drywall when he finishes, and now it is jumping to $2000 since he thought he didn't need a permit for running electrical). On top of the money we've paid him, we've spent literally thousands stuck in hotels while this project has been ongoing. And now all work has been halted, leaving us with no kitchen or anything for the foreseeable future since he says he can't work on anything until we cover the costs of his permits and licensure and he doesn't have the funds to pay for any of it.

Now, with the background out of the way, here are two issues we're having.

It looks like we can't go to an attorney because it states in the contract, "In any dispute arising from or relating to this Agreement, the Parties shall first submit the dispute to mediation."

2) Regarding the licenses and permits, it specifically states: "Contractor shall at its own expense obtain all permits necessary for the work to be performed." and "All work shall be completed in a workman-like manner and in compliance with all building codes and other applicable laws." Even with this, he's stating that we are responsible for paying for this since he didn't charge us because he shouldn't need permits for anything.

We do have issues with other things as well, such as asking about making a change, him saying he would give information, and then finding out the work was already done and we were to pay x amount since it was completed, even though if we had known the cost we would have rejected it. Contract specifically says all changes must go through signed change orders but when we brought this up to him after the fact (after he had already tacked on $25k or so in charges for things we were just trying to get info on), he said he skipped them because it "is too much of a hassle to keep going back and forth with change orders."

I know this is a huge mess... and it's something I really didn't expect to end up in. We thought that by hiring a company that's verified on sites like HomeAdvisor that we were good. I never even would have fathomed a contractor not pulling permits and then trying to argue with us about how he doesn't need them since all work is "interior" and that makes permits irrelevant.

Does anyone have any clue as to where we even start with this? We've literally dumped everything we have into the project because we wanted to get it done. 3+ months without a usable home has been rough in and of itself, and now there's no end in sight. And if we have to pay attorneys up front I don't really know what to do because we quite literally are living off salads and keeping the heat off (despite it being 45 degrees inside right now) because we've had to spend so much on hotels and such while they work, plus him constantly pushing for more money and cutting off work until it's paid.

Thank you for reading this, and if there are any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.