Poor Project Management by Mr. Males led to extensive water damage in our newly remodeled kitchen (remodeled by an honest contractor a couple of years earlier). While this contractor brought a team in to attempt corrective action (warped hardwood floor, blistered paint damaged ceiling and trim), the end result was not satisfactory. In fact, Mr. Males refused to replace a small piece of trim that was damaged in the flood saying it was a pre-existing condition (it wasn’t). Some customer service! A stated 4 - 6-week project ended up taking 7 months to compete partially due to rain, partially due to no one showing up at the work site. When the crew showed up for work it was at 10:00 to 10:30 am. They were cleaning up by 3:30 pm. Several times I had to place calls to Mr. Males to find out where his subcontractor’s workers were on beautiful sunny days. Usually he was unaware of their whereabouts.
Items talked about during planning meetings with Mr. Males never made it into the contract and despite verbal assurances that they were included in the price, I was billed for them at the end of the project, after the last (scheduled) payment was made. One example was the trapezoid windows that were installed in the eaves of the sunroom. Mr. Males indicated in an email that they were included in the price of the project yet I got billed again for them at the end.
No formal building plan was ever created at the beginning of the project so the sub-contractor (Mr. Males was rarely onsite) had to basically wing it. Along the way, mistakes were made that ended up costing more time and materials even though no change request or notification of cost overrun was drawn up for ratification, a standard project management procedure. It took this contactor 3 attempts to build a staircase to a sunroom that would pass building inspection. The final solution was to temporarily move the left railing towards the middle of the steps to meet the code requirements, a modification that rendered the steps unusable. As soon as the Inspector approved the steps and left, the railing was moved back to the original location. So, as built right now, the steps this contractor built up to our sunroom will not pass Maryland building inspection.
There are a lot of honest, trustworthy contractors out in the market place to choose from. Please learn from my mistake, steer clear of this one.