We hired this company to remove and replace almost all of the Sheetrock, including the ceiling, in one of our bathrooms.
After the new sheet rock was hung, I noticed a piece of the window sill broken off. This likely happened when the crew was throwing the old Sheetrock out of the window onto the ground for the trash, The first thing I was told after I pointed it out was that it might have already been like that; no it wasn't. Then I was told that they didn't see a piece like this on the ground and I told them it clearly happened. Then was told if they could find the piece they could glue it back on. SERIOUSLY! This is a piece from our window frame that wasn't broken before this job started. Work continued while the owner made calls to get a window person to take a look at the broken area to "fix it." We really do hate that this company ended up having to incur the expense of replacing the entire window, but it had to be done. Things just didn't seem to be going so well after that. There was definitely tension.
When the Sheetrock and texture was finished I looked at the walls and thought they looked ok until the paint was going on. It was then that I noticed problems with the texture not being rolled evenly. There are spaces all over without texture. This meant texture had to be reapplied at our expense, not by the contractor. Exceptionally large gaps were left on the ceiling Sheetrock above the tub. I was told it was because our tiled wall was not square with the ceiling. This was not completely true. The gaps are actually where the Sheetrock was not cut straight before hanging. The contractor should have filled these gaps before calling the job complete instead of telling me that I just need to caulk the area to close it up.
Next came cleanup and this part had been frustrating since the day they started. They laid plastic on the floor from the front door to the bathroom where they were working, yet put their tools on our rug next to the plastic. I left two curtains on a tension rod hanging to keep our towels and other linens from getting dirty in the bathroom because this area was not being worked on. At one point I walked in and saw that the curtain was opened where the Sheetrock mud was applied from a side wall to the linen area. It would have only taken two minutes for us to remove the items from these closets to keep them from getting very dusty if they had only told us that they actually weren't safe from the dust. There were other things we had not removed that had to be done before work got started, i.e. toilet, towel bar and light fixtures; the linen shelves could have even been removed at this time if it was known. Needless to say, there was a lot of laundry that had to be done because EVERYTHING was covered in dust. Also, they never hung sheeting to help keep the dust to the bathroom. We had dust all over our house! It was even on the upstairs railing and floor. We had just got a new HVAC system before this job was done and their negligence to protect the rest of our house meant that both of our return filters, upstairs and down were full of Sheetrock dust. I had told him that we just had it put in and still no respect to cover the room and do most work with the door closed.
When they were packing their stuff to leave there was one man sweeping the Sheetrock across our slate floors that were not properly covered to be protected. I was already very aggravated at this time and told him to just leave it. The floors should have been covered to protect them.
I felt that the owner, Lupe, was very fast to tell me that something else was going to cost more. I.e. it was not written anywhere about the cost of each piece of Sheetrock and what I would incur if another sheet was needed. I paid $80 for one additional sheet that was included in the estimate. A cost for disposing of the trash from the job was also not listed on the contract. They left all of the trash at the curb and I received a notice from our trash pick up that they would not take construction trash. I notified Lupe who told me that it costs extra. This should have been included in the detailed contract. He wanted to charge me $250 to come and take it. I was not going to pay that much but ended up paying him $200 just to get it removed. We are still cleaning up pieces of Sheetrock from our backyard where everything was thrown out of the window and the pieces of spray foam used when putting in the window.
These details of the job aren't even everything that went wrong. This contractor never should have quoted to do our job. He prefers doing larger jobs where there is more money in it. We have other work to be done on our house and this could have been a great opportunity for us to call on him again. I assure you that I will never call on him to bid and do a job for us again. read more