I would give Lee Watkins Home Improvement no stars if that were even an option. This guy is shady. Last summer, he and his crew built a privacy fence around my house and a picket fence in the front yard. The project lasted from the end of June to mid- to late July and I couldn't have been happier ... until all the problems started showing up.
In October, I realized he or someone on his crew never nailed the bottom of the picket fence to the posts on one side of the house. I have a large and powerful dog, and she could have easily gotten out. Lee said he personally went along each side of the fence to make sure it was secure, and instead blamed the painter. But there were no holes in the posts - WHICH MEANS THEY WERE NEVER SCREWED IN.
He had also said he'd come back to do some minor fixes on the perimeter fence, which he never did. For example, instead of removing an existing chainlink fence at the side of the house, he just built around it. I had to remove the fence myself, and he never returned to fill in the roughly 4-foot gap (which I had to cover with a big piece of plywood). He also only nailed boards at the bottom of roughly one-fifth of the fence, and said he'd come back to do the rest. Not a sign of him.
Meanwhile, before I started noticing all the problems, I hired him to do some handyman work. This was in early September, and I wanted to get them done before I left for a 6-week-long trip. The work included building and installing screens for my back porch, installing an enclosure around my air conditioning unit, and installing molding in my bedroom and bathroom. He set the posts for the enclosure and nailed in the lattice on one side, then said he'd come back to finish the rest of it. And he did the molding, which he said he wouldn't charge me for.
I paid for the work he'd already done, and foolishly paid him in advance for the work he was supposed to complete while I was on my trip. Six weeks later and ... nothing. Meanwhile, some of the glue or adhesive or whatever material he used to secure the molding to the floor seeped out, leaving big sticky blotches all over my bedroom floor.
Sometime in October, after I came back from my trip, Lee finally came back with an envelope full of cash (minus the cost for installing the molding, which he apparently decided he was going to charge for after all). But ONLY AFTER I THREATENED TO TAKE HIM TO SMALL CLAIMS COURT.
The last straw came in early February, when a roughly 10-foot section of the privacy fence blew down. Granted, it was after a strong wind storm, and it's a tall fence. But there are houses all along this street with 8-ft. fences and none of them were damaged that I could see. He said no fence is guaranteed against such strong winds, but the contract clearly states that all work - including the fence - is guaranteed for one year. But he wanted to charge something like $400 to come back out and fix it.
I hired another crew to fix it instead, and come to find out the posts weren't dug deep enough, and some of the boards weren't nailed into the posts! Lee and I exchanged a rather heated series of texts when I asked him to reimburse me. I would include the whole exchange here, but he used vulgar and sexist language that it wouldn't be appropriate. But just as an example, he wrote to "go f*** yourself ... those posts were 2 ft in the ground." Know what the industry standard is digging holes for an 8-foot fence? 2 1/2 to 4 feet. Which means any time there's a strong wind storm now, I have to worry about another section of the fence blowing down.
One last thing: When the privacy fence was being built, he claimed the contractor had someone lined up to clear debris from the area. I don't know if that's true, or if it was part of Lee's job to do that. But he charged me $400 for that alone. That's in addition to the thousands of dollars I'd already paid upfront.
Do not hire this man for fencing, handyman work or anything else. You have been warned. read more