In Oct 2021 I dropped off a hutch that my grandfather built to be finished. Steve had it in storage…read morefor two years without a single update. He then started relentlessly blowing up my phone in Oct 2023, telling me that he needed to know what stain I wanted to use ASAP. I told him I needed some time to get to the store (as it had been TWO YEARS, I had moved, so I had changed my mind about the original stain I wanted to use). Though I texted him that and called him over the weekend to keep him updated, he still texted me three days later with, "I still did not hear from you months will go by and it is still in my shop. PS you haven't attempted to come to shop." YEAH, of course months went by, with it stuck in his storage. THIS delay could have been avoided if he had simply told me he was ready for the stain when he actually started working on it, instead of the day it was ready to be stained.
The first stain I brought didn't work out. To his credit, Steve thought it would look too orange and did a test spot while I was there. He was absolutely right and I went back to find another color. When I called him to confirm I had the new stain and would drop it off, he asked me for a deposit on the work on the hutch. He didn't specify an amount, so when I dropped off the stain I wrote him a check for $100. He then sighed heavily, argued with me, and insisted on a 50% deposit--I refused, as I was not handing over $350 for work that he hadn't done yet, after he had held on to my hutch for over two years. Who knows when I'd actually see a finished hutch?! The hutch/stain were mine, so what overhead costs would I be paying the deposit for? Finally I firmly said that I wasn't giving him more than the $100 deposit and he pissily said, "Fine, whatever, but I'm not prioritizing this before Christmas." He'd had it for two years, I really wasn't that worried about having it before Christmas at that point.
On Jan 30th he texted me to tell me it was ready to pick up. I replied that we'd be there Feb 1st to get it. When we got there, the hutch was "done" but the finishing work was so sloppy that I think I would have been better off actually doing the work myself. I've attached pictures of all of the sloppy finishes--stain left on the glass, white paint along the upper door frames, the bottom of the door frame completely unstained (both should the same color as the sides of the door frames), dings in the wood, super glue (!) to hold the top frame together. Particularly problematic is that there's an indentation of a phone number in the top of the base--he clearly wrote a phone number on top of the hutch and just stained right over the indentation he left behind. He said it must have been there already, but A) it absolutely wasn't and B) even if it WAS, wouldn't part of the job be sanding out stuff like that? His response was, "oh well, I'd have to redo the whole top in order to take care of it, and I already did a lot of work on it."
He started showing my friend that he had "even stained the back of it." When my friend responded with, "I actually never saw it before, so I'm not sure what it looked like then," Steve said, "Well, I just wanted to show you because I know what SHE'S like" and gestured at me. What am I like, exactly? Expecting you to actually do the job I hired you for? How horrible of me.
When I decided that I'd rather pay him and take the hutch as-is instead of having to deal with him for a single second more, he said, "Oh, you're writing a check? ::heavy sigh:: I really want cash, a check is going to take a few days to clear." Well, Steve, I don't usually carry hundreds of dollars in cash around with me. Then he asked me if I could write the check and then go cash it for him. If you want to be paid in cash you really need to tell people ahead of time. Luckily my friend DOES carry a lot of cash around with him and ended up loaning me the cash to pay Steve.
Needless to say, I do not recommend working with Steve. I could put up with the attitude and the incredibly long wait if his work was stellar, but it's simply not.
