I hired Considerate Contracting to do an insurance job at my house in October of 2022. A pipe under the kitchen sink had burst and flooded several rooms of my house. 1-800-waterdamage came and cleaned up the water damage per the recommendation of State Farm. When I asked 1-800- waterdamage for a recommendation of a building contractor to fix my house, they recommended Considerate Contracting. ( I later learned that the wife of the owner of Considerate Contracting worked for 1-800-waterdamage)
Considerate Contracting had the estimate from State Farm of what they would pay to get my house back in livable condition. I gave this to Considerate Contracting right away. Things were fine at first, and then the costs went sharply up. Insulation under the house was replaced ( 1-800-waterdamage had already torn it out and hauled it off) by a subcontractor hired by Considerate Contracting and it was an area of approximately 800 square feet that needed to be replaced. State Farm was willing to pay $1,400 for the job, Considerate Contracting seemed to be fine with the price, but when Charlie Brown of Considerate Contracting contacted me afterward, he said he was surprised that they had charged him $2,800 instead. Inside the house, flood cuts had been done to check for water in the walls. Considerate Contracting was to fix some drywall in those areas, replace insulation (State Farm estimated the tiny amount of insulation to be replaced should cost $64.00) and State Farm had estimated the cost of the drywall at $517.00. Considerate Contracting told me after the fact that it had cost $3,711.00 for the drywall. The funny thing is that cost didn't even include separate primer or painting over the texture.
Considerate Contracting ordered me some new cabinets top and bottom, thinking they wouldn't be able to match the shades of white of the upper shaker cabinets that didn't need to be replaced. They took down my old upper cabinets and I told them I wanted to keep them. When the new cabinets arrived, they were much lower quality than what I previously had, they looked small, so I measured, and several were not the correct size. I did not accept the cabinets. Charlie Brown of Considerate Contracting (co-owner) came and got the cabinets and promptly quit, saying he had 6 other jobs he was working on and that he didn't want to deal with this. After the fact when I went through the cabinets that had been taken down, I noticed that Considerate Contracting had thrown out one of my upper cabinets that was supposed to be saved. Since I was going to end up reinstalling them, I had to pay $350.00 for a new cabinet and $125.00 for the end cap that went on it.
When I signed the contract with Considerate Contracting I sent them a deposit check for $17,000 (which was half of the cost of the entire job minus my insurance deductable.) After they quit, I received back $5,000 of the money I had given them with the cost of the insulation, drywall, cost to take down the upper cabinets (there were 5 of them), and to haul off my quartz countertops deducted from the $17,000. I received a very vague explanation of what the costs were as well as a line item for the insulation that needed to be replaced in the flood cuts inside the house as costing $350.00. (remember State Farm said it should cost $64.00 and the labor should have been included with replacing the insulation under the house - which is wasn't). This was the first time I had seen what the cost of the drywall was. I had not been told the cost would be far greater than what State Farm was willing to pay.
State Farm is not going to pay me extra for these overuns of cost. I am in the hole thousands of dollars due to the artificially inflated costs of Considerate Contracting. I cannot afford to finish my house now. I would never hire them to do any type of job for me and will recommend that no one I talk to does either. read more