In September we contacted Brown's Roofing to give us an estimate on repairing some broken rafters in our main roof. We were in the process of selling our house and the home inspector had noted that there were some cracked or broken rafters that needed repaired. Visual inspection from the attic access only showed one obvious damaged board, one of the hip rafters.
Dan told us that the entire roof sheathing needed to be torn off to repair the damaged rafters. He quoted us over $8000 for that and $30 a foot to repair broken rafters. Being that the only rafter that I was completely aware of was a hip rafter, I reluctantly signed off on the outrageous rafter repair price due to the labor involved in sistering or replacing a hip rafter. During this process Dan was one of the nicest people that I had ever met. He stated that they would only replace\repair what was necessary to pass inspection.
Mid October his motley crew arrived and began removing the shingles and sheathing. The "foreman" never once came over and talked to me, I had to talk to him and ask him how things were going. I asked him to have them pull back insulation from the soffits while they had the roof off, which he promptly screamed up to his workers, to which one replied "nope we're not gonna do that." I observed them smoking above an open roof and tossing energy drink cans in the yard, not one iota of professionalism.
After seeing an alarming amount of 2X6s being carried up on the roof, I asked the "foreman" how many feet they had used so far. He screamed back and forth with one of his workers, neither seemed to have an accurate answer, but finally agreed on something over 100 feet. I told him that I was going to need to talk to Dan due to what he was charging me per foot.
I called Dan and left a message for him to call me. I had just stepped outside and my wife answered the phone. She asked if I could call him back to which he stated that it was after hours so it was now or not tonight. My wife brought the phone to me and to my surprise a man that had come across as salt of the earth was suddenly completely belligerent. He was yelling at me and telling me that I signed off on the contract. Apparently he had spoken with his "foreman" and they had come up with something like 170 feet so far. I advised him that I had signed off on that price due to the labor involved in repairing a hip rafter. Most of the rafters that they were "repairing" were common rafters, which they were sistering full length on both sides. He was charging me $360 for a $10 2x6 and the 10 minutes of labor to "repair" the damaged rafters. They finished the job the next day adding another 40 plus feet.
The job that was quoted at just over $8,000 was now almost $15,000. Due to the fact that we were under contract trying to sell our house, we paid the bill to avoid him putting a contractor's lien on the property and making it impossible for us to sell. read more
