I worked with this contractor for nearly a year as he fully renovated my whole house including my basement. It was an extremely difficult and exhausting process working with this contractor. Communication was seriously lacking, he made his own decisions without asking my opinion first, he was very reluctant and resistant in redoing work that did not look acceptable, the quality of his work was not always good, he did not check over his work and left certain areas of my home unfinished.
The whole time that the work was being done to my house, I was living out of state, so it was mainly my mother-in-law and Gio working together with me seeing his work during video calls and pictures. A lot of times he would just do something his way, versus the way I would tell him. When he stained my steps, originally the top steps were to be brown and the part underneath painted white. I see pictures of the steps and they are all stained brown. When asked as to why he didn't do it the way we asked, he says he liked it better that way.
I asked him to build a fence. The door swung out and into my driveway instead of going into my backyard, which made it difficult to park in my driveway. There were also a lot of nails sticking out of the fence too. I tell him to repair the fence and to make the door swing into the backyard and he argued with me saying that all fence doors swing that way and that he wasn't going to fix it. I tell him he didn't even ask me which way I wanted the door to swing, he just made his own decision. After a lot of coaxing, he says that he will fix it but only after paying him to buy supplies. Even after he "fixes" it and the gate swings into the back yard, the actual door itself was too heavy and would drag on the ground. I realized that Gio didn't know how to build a fence and I had to call a fence company to build me a new door.
Gio would do work incorrectly or would forget to do work. The floor in my basement is uneven, so when you walk across you can feel that the floor is not level. When he was building the bathroom in the basement, I had told him to make it the same as he did upstairs and to use all the same fixtures. However, when he was done with the basement bathroom, he used a completely different shower head. The showerhead in the basement is also too short. When I stand underneath it, it comes to my nose, not over my head like most shower fixtures should.
The paint in my bathroom is starting to crack and peel. He also used a low quality paint, because if anything touches the walls, it leaves a scratch. The grout in the bathrooms was mixed incorrectly resulting in cracks between the tiles in the shower and on the floor. He left two door frames in my upstairs bedrooms completely unfinished even after he said he had fixed them. There is no outside outlet in my backyard. When I asked Gio about this, he says he "forgot" to put one there and that it's too late for one now. Now if I need to use an outlet for outside, I have to run an extension cord through my house. Gio used a picture of my house online without asking me. I asked him to please take it down. He says that he will remove it and sends me a screenshot of him taking down the picture. Then a week later, I go back to check and see it is still online.
The biggest reason I did not like working with Gio is because he does not value customer service. He does not like it when you disagree with him. I easily paid him over $100K to renovate my house. With that amount of money and the time it took to renovate everything, I expect work to be done correctly. I understand that sometimes things have to be redone, but what I do not appreciate is the arguments about why he did it that way or why he doesn't want to redo work. When I did come up to Virginia to look at the house myself, I saw a lot of things that needed to be fixed. I contact Gio and send him a list of everything that needs to be done. He says that he will come and do it, but that he doesn't want me or my mother in law to be there because he doesn't want to have us watching over him and he didn't want to take off his shoes. He says to leave him a key. How can you tell me, that you don't want me to be in my own house? Comments like these and his quality of work is why I would not recommend him. read more