Terrible Experience, Very Unprofessional Service by Richard Case of Bristol builders. STAY WELL…read moreCLEAR.
Mr Richard Case initially came across as very professional, genuine and committed to his work. He came round before commencing the work with contracts and a completion date.
However, this initial positive experience could not have been further from the truth. We hired Richard Case to:
1) Render the outside of our house
2) Damp proof the inside of our living room
3) Replace a gallows bracket under removed chimney breast in the loft
4) Replace an arch over the main door
5) Close off and vent the chimney breast on the ground floor.
6) Fit a new window in the living room
7) Waste removal of old building materials and rubble.
Mr Case did a fantastic job of closing off the chimney breast on the ground floor, and of replacing an arch over the front door of our property. This aspect of this work was immaculate, and gave us confidence in his work. Mr Case continued to strip off the old plaster from the living room, ready for the internal damp proofing render and DPC. The walls were stripped down to bare brick, and there was dust absolutely everywhere, which is to be expected with such extensive work. Mr Case assured us the work would be done quickly.
However, he disappeared for a few weeks after this - without a word. He did not explain to us what was going on, refused to answer our phone calls, and left our house as a building site. He promised to finish the work within a certain time scale, however, 2 months after, he had barely started, and we were pretty much living in the kitchen as the rest of our house was full of building dust.
Mr Case then returned within a few weeks, and we gave him the benefit of the doubt as he explained he had family problems. He continued with the internal damp proofing, which was done to an good standard (apart from the fact that he said the DPC had been carried out when it actually hadn't!). However, he then re plastered the living room, and to be fair, did a fantastic job of the plastering.
However, the biggest horror started when he attempted to render the outside of the house. He had previously replaced the window in the living room. He did the rendering, and in the process, absolutely wrecked our new window; it is covered in render and scratched to bits. Moreover, within a day, the whole lot was starting to come down as he had rendered straight over old flaking paint!! He left the fallen render in bags all over our garden - our garden is absolutely wrecked! He did not apologise for this botch job, but made out that he had done us a favour by taking down the remainder of render that was not sticking, and even tried to charge us for doing this!!!
When we explained we were not happy paying for rendering that ended up in bin bags rather than on the walls - Mr Case threatened to dump all the old building materials he had previously taken away back in our garden out of spite, although we had already paid for the removal of waste. He did not take away the remainder of the failed render, and left our front garden full of building waste and rubble. He did not answer our calls when we tried calling to resolve the situation, but indeed communicated these threats via text messages.
The work was not resolved, neither did bristol builders try to put things right for us. They truly made our lives hell for months. We went on to hire a different builder to re do all the work and to fix the damages caused to our property, and he turned out to be absolutely fantastic. All is now fine, apart from the immense costs incurred and inconvenience caused for us by Mr Case. NEVER would we hire Bristol Builders again, and I'd advise anyone against doing so.
