I'd like to start saying that my wife and me are hard workers, with similar hopes and dreams as…read moreanybody else, wanting to have a better house for our kids and for ourselves.
With the economy as it is right now it is very painful when some shady contractor comes and takes $25,000 for a job, and that job not only doesn't get finished but also the 20%-25% that is done is not even done up to Livonia code and its full of violations.
We signed a contract with Giles Remodeling & Restoration LLC. Specifically with Andrew Derek Giles back in April 16th with its respective deposit check of $15,000, for what it was supposed to be an easy couple of projects (We can show you the contract), we wanted to build an addition to our back yard (stand up shower and laundry room) and also update/remodel our upstairs bathroom.
Both of the projects, according to the contract, were supposed to be completed in two months, starting May 13th, but this is where all the problems started, the assumption is that as of starters he would've had applied for the permit at the starting date, well, wrong!!!, he didn't applied for the permit until May 20th and that was only because we kept bugging him about it, so because of that we didn't get the permit until July 11th, we know that the acceptance of the permit doesn't have to do anything with this guy, we knew that Livonia processing was backed up.
No problem, we waited, now you would've thought that once the permit was granted, he was going to start right after, well, wrong again, he didn't start actual construction until August 1st (they started digging a trench for the footings).
We have to mentioned that these people are very fortunate because apparently, they only work for a couple days a week or at least that's what they did on our project.
They didn't finish the footings until August 9th, judging by the time, felt like they dogged it by hand, after this was finally done, they were supposed to start with the framing, of course not after we had to give him (according to the contract) another $5,000 check, which we did that same day (Aug 9th), OF COURSE!!!, and following a trend, they didn't start again until September 9th at this point they had to start with the framing and the roofing, which the didn't finished until September 19th, of course and because it was stipulated on the contract we have to give him another $5,000 check.
After the last check they didn't show up until October 7th to demo the wall that divides our house with the new addition, and you would think that they would have covered with some sort of insulation or something, well they didn't, they just left us with a piece of plastic with a big zipper in the middle, I have to mention that this part of our house is actually a bathroom, so we technically had to do our needs on the outdoors.
Their final move happened October 16th where they showed up to do some siding and per our request to put something sturdier (a foam wall) to divide the house from the addition.
As you can see from April to October is exactly 6 months for a little addition of 6ftx19ft, talking to other contractors they can build an entire house in this amount of time, but not only that, we saw that the craftsmanship of the work done was very poor and unprofessional, so we decided to contact the building inspectors of Livonia to find out that whatever was built, it was built poorly and with a lengthy list of violations.
Evidently after this we decided that we didn't want to continue with this guy, now the problem is that he left us with an unfinished project (20%-25%), a poor construction, less $25,000 on our pockets and also with having to contact a different contractor who kindly enough is willing to help us but he will charge us to finish $40,000 from which $10,000 are only to fix the violations that Giles Remodeling and Restoration LLC and Andrew Derek Giles left us with.
The addition that we're talking about was estimated by Giles at $18,825 for the shower and Bathroom & $5,895 for the Laundry room, as you can see, with the $25,000 that we gave him the addition was 100% paid & covered.