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it's a disaster! vent...kinda long.
So you may see me on the People's Court, because this turtle pond is an official, f-ing disaster.
The judge will look at us with a raise eyebrow, of course, when we hang our heads with shame when we say No, we didn't have a contract for any of this. Our contractor was a buddy. We just kept handing over checks.
Well, we're done handing over checks! When the contractor left last week after the concrete was poured (We had to insist he or his little illegal laborer come back the next day to finish the concrete and patch all the big holes and ugly spots left after the form was removed) he said to DH "I'll let you know how much it is to settle up." Settle up? How much more could we possible owe him?
First we hand him a check for $1300; presumably to pay him to pay his laborer and to pay for materials. I'm sure he took a cut. Then we hand him a check for $1500 to pay him to pay the concrete guy and to pay for materials. I'm sure he took a cut of that. Then we hand him a third check, because there wasn't enough concrete and they had to cuy some more. Then he comes at us with this "settle up" business.... settle up for what? His expert coordinating services? He basically told his laborer and the concrete guys, in pantomime and three words of Spanish no less, where to show up and what to do. He was overly confident of the job that would be done and overly cavalier about our concerns about how the concrete looked once the forms were removed (what? it's not like it will leak, he said) and dismissive of our concerns when then completed job leaked (I told you it could leak, he said)... and he leaves DH a message this morning that we owe him $2500 for his services!
TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED! For what, pray tell? We are supposed to now pay him almost 75-percent of what we've already paid, as a fee for his sending over a laborer to do all the work? for finding us a concrete guy who --according to my dad should have used a more dense cement for a pond -- poured concrete that's leaking?
I'm just blown away. I'd say i'm speechless, but if you've read this far you'd know that isn't quite accurate. But can you believe that? We pay him, and we still have to buy all the pumps and equipment and flagstones and f-ing koi... We could have contracted with the local pond expert who gave us the $10k estimate and for basically the same amount we would have done nothing but sit back and relax b/c the pond expert was going to dig, cement, run electrical, run the plumbing, install the equipment, lights, water, LANDSCAPING, and he was going to give us half a dozen koi for free. Ultimately, we're looking to pay our contractor nearly that much for a big, unfinished cement box in the backyard.
This is all our own fault, of course. The DIY route is never necessarily less expensive, and we're absolute fools to not get everything in writing first, but DAMN! We feel like we're being screwed. Hard.
What do we do? Can we do anything? We just don't have $2500 more to give him. It's already cost so much that we have to take the remaining portions in steps, like when we save it up again, after we pay property taxes.
Sigh.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Re: it's a disaster! vent...kinda long.
sarah, my husband just checked the state contractor's license board.. guess who wasn't there? maybe he isn't bonded, then. DH is prepared to just say no, we won't pay it.
I feel terrible about it, b/c his wife sent a nice little present to the baby last week and I hadn't sent a thank you note yet.
And the contractor is on DH's baseball team, and the whole team was friends with contractor first. There goes the team roster...
People are so shady.
Did he also check the CLB site to see if he might be bonded under his business name? That sometimes happens where they are bonded as their corp and not as an ind.
Maybe your DH should just sit down with him and have it out - they should not bring the baseball bats to the meeting though
Dh called him and left a message saying that $2500 was an outrageous amount to charge for his project management services, that no contractor charges 75% of the proect cost, and that we'd want an itemized statement of everything we'd paid for to date before we wrote any more checks.
What a disaster. It makes me feel sort of ill how much our little DIY pond is costing.
It will all be worth it in the end. It's only money right? It grows on trees you know.
Farm Stand laid me off yesterday - only to call me again last night to tell me that they changed their minds. WTF right?
that happened to my sister --she had been waitressing at a bar and they let her go, only to call her back a week later b/c they were short staffed (duh). she told them to f-off. what's your status with farm stand, then?
wow i'm so sorry!!!!!!!
I dont have any advise really. I can relate though. We had a contractor lined up to paint our condo. Our next door neighbor came in all noisy, and said he was a painter. He took us to show us his place (which looked nice), and he convinced us to hire him.
We told him we were under a deadline and needed 1500 sq feet painted in 5 days. The other contractor had a small army of 5 guys and told us he could do it in 2 days.
Our neighbor said no problem. Well... He didn't paint! He just hired a painter to paint it for us. While the painter was a good guy, he was only one. After 4 days, he barely had 1 coat finished! Then i asked the guy about a 2nd coat, and he looked at me like... what second coat??????
Then i asked my neighbor about it, and he said, we never talked about a 2nd coat. I was like wtf! So its supposed to look crappy???????
So the poor guy stayed all night and pulled an all nighter. The whole time my neighbor just hung out and chatted and kept distracting the painter. He was totally worthless. I was thinking, why dont you pick up a brush and help!!
We also didn't have a contract as we trusted him being our next door neighbor adn all.
Then our neighbor comes in and demands hte 2nd half of the money because they were "almost" finished. He started going on about how he needed the money to pay rent and stuff. I shoudl have known better. To not give it to him UNTIL it was 100 percent completed. But i bought his sob story and gave it to him.
The painter and him never showed up again to finish!
They didn't even touch the trim! The trim is the hardest part. Most time consuming. And they totally didn't do it. It just had lots of putty marks and wasn't painted at all. I was so upset.
I learned a lesson though.
So DEFINITELY do NOT pay him ANY more money if you are dissatisfied. You will NEVER see him again at your house if you do.
UG, bad contractors.........