Do not hire. Lawsuit pending
Paolo will demand advanced pay claiming most of the cost is materials or he needs it for labor. Basically if you don't pay work will stop. After the check cleared his phone stopped taking calls or was disconnected. I heard from him maybe a week later from a new number, this was never explained. He finally returned, did more work and pleaded for more pay claiming he couldn't pay his laborers to continue. He does not have a car as far as I can tell. I ended up picking up items regularly spending $1600 out of pocket which he never reimbursed. He did not have proper equipment for the job and mostly relied on my tools and my assistance. His workmanship was poor and he would continually do unsafe things (to the house and his worker) to which I would intervene.
He eventually said the work was much harder than he anticipated and I would have to finish the job myself or pay him more money than we agreed to. I realized this was likely because he created a huge problem by cutting the beam in the wrong spot. His lines were all over the place and 3" off the mark meaning there was not proper bearing below. His cuts not square and angled. He completely damaged all ceiling joists by cutting them wrong and created a structural issue.
Long story short I am suing him. I ended up finishing the job myself which was about another week of work and correcting his mistakes. I am very experienced with construction and know poor work when I see it. I ended up paying more than the total contracted amount despite doing more than half the work. read more