Larry W. shares his terrible experience with an unreliable contractor and a never-ending kitchen renovation ordeal:
Hi there, I just wanted to share my story with you. Everyone dreams of having their own home one day. It's the American Dream!
But what a nightmare this has been for my family! The first bid from a contractor (not you guys) was for about $26,000 for a kitchen and 3 bathrooms. We thought that was a great price for what we had discussed with him, so we did not look any further. When I took the bid to the bank they would not accept it because it was not detailed enough. (That should have been my first clue).
However, I had never done anything like this before. I had to call him back and tell him that the bank wanted details. He said no problem and about two to three days later he dropped the bid in our mailbox because we were not at home.
Much to our surprise the bid had gone up to $46,000!
We did go ahead and begin the work, but ended up firing the contractor. At the time we had NO sinks, commodes (we had one but one of the workers broke it), vanities, cabinets, or flooring. Walls were never spackled and taped, there was no sink in the kitchen and the rest of the plumbing was never done,
Most of the electrical work was not finished and the wires were just dangling in the box. One of his workers always showed up on drugs and smelled of alcohol. The list just goes on and on!
I know that this nightmare will never end. I even thought about entering that TV show where they makeover your home (with my bad luck I would never get picked). We filed criminal charges against this man and he got indicted by a Grand Jury. Since it's his first offense he MIGHT get probation and have to pay something back in restitution. We do not know this yet because we are still waiting for them to set a trial date. He has had numerous pre-trials already.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that he forged my name in order to get the money from the account from the bank?
I am afraid to trust people now and that makes me so mad because I know that there that there are good people in this world. If I knew then what I know now I would not be in this mess. I guess you live and learn.
Thank you so much for sharing, Larry. That sounds awful and we sincerely hope that nightmare is over for you soon. We are sure that initial price sounded really great, but ultimately will end up being very costly in not only money, but energy and time.
Larry's experience is one that we can learn from vicariously. A super-sweet price is likely to be an illusion concocted to entice you. Reliability and quality craftsmanship are valuable, and are rarely found at a skimpy price. That's not to say there aren't legitimate 'great deals' out there, but it's always wise to use dicernment at a offer than sounds too good to be true.
If you're in the market for a design-builder to remodel your kitchen, rather than focusing on price, we recommend centering your decision on the contractor's credentials and track-record. Your budget can be managed by way of the materials and solutions you select, but it will cost much more to re-remodel a shoddily updated kitchen if you go with an inexpensive, but inexperienced and unreliable, contractor.