Unfortunately, I didn't have a good experience with Focil Construction. I should have known that…read morethey were not trustworthy when they verbally made promises (such as the renovation would be complete by Thanksgiving) but then wrote a different date (end of December) into the contract. When I questioned why the contract said end of December, Joseph told me that the contract required adding an additional month. When I received the schedule of work, that too said the project would be completed by the end of December. I was not living yet in the property and renting, so the additional month added another $2,300 onto the project that I wasn't expecting. I asked for them not to charge me for additional fabrication and installation of the stone which they refused but they did end up finishing by the end of November so that I could get my furniture out of the rental so that I would not be charged for another month.
This was not the only reason I began not to trust them any longer. I ordered the stone through the family of a friend, and the owner of the store asked for the name, address and phone number of the fabricator. I asked Catalina for this information. She gave me the correct address because the stone needed to be delivered there; however, she lied about the name of the fabricator. As you can see in the screenshot, she said the name was Israel when it's in fact Olympus. She supplied her own phone number as the number of the fabricator. Anytime I see lying, I wonder the motive, and I start to question everything.
In addition, on the contract, the square footage was greater than the entire area of my condo. Again, I had questioned this when I signed the contract and Catalina assured me that I would only be charge for work done. I later had to argue with Joseph to get him to reduce the amount he was charging to the actual square footage which I estimated by taking the number of boxes of wood and multiplying by the square footage per box. Joseph told me that they used every single piece of wood in every box, but, as you can see in the attached photo, there was a box still sealed that had not been used. If I had not questioned this, it would have been $700 more.
When I began to question the integrity of Joseph and Catalina, I did more research. The amount of glue needed for the wood floor is 30-35 square feet per gallon. I confirmed this with another flooring installer who works for the friend from whom I purchased the wood floor. In the attached, you will see that I was charged for 8 bucket of glue (5 gallons in each bucket) at $207 each. That is literally twice the recommended amount for the 650 square feet of wood that they installed. Also, I provided 4 buckets of the same glue for the padding that went underneath the floor. At $207 each bucket, I was overcharged more than $800.
This led me to question the linear square feet of baseboard which I just got done measuring. I was charge for 240 square feet; however, the linear square footage of what I measured was 160 square feet, quite a difference and an additional charge of almost $500.
There was an additional issue with the electrical outlet for the refrigerator. The appliance store was not able to install the refrigerator, because the cord would not reach to the outlet where they had placed it. I ended up having to pay for an additional visit from the appliance store ($75). I asked Joseph if he would reimburse me for this since he was responsible for installing the outlet in the correct location. He never responded to me.
I definitely feel that Joseph and Catalina took advantage of me and my lack of knowledge and experience with renovation work. I wasn't able to catch all of the overcharges before paying for them, and it added to the already exorbitant cost of the renovation. I wish I had gone with a different contractor.