is jeff licensed and bonded? did you pay him money before he started? did you hire any of the subcontractors yourself? did you do any of the work yourself? who's contract did you sign? who did the drawings? why did not not hold 10% of the contract amount until 35 days after the completion of the job and request conditional and unconditional lien releases?
Oh, now you tell me!
I was desperate. I bought a dump that I could not live in for the two years it would have taken to have a legit, recommended, contractor take the job.
I think I made out pretty well.
I did nothing myself except paint. That I did, but that's only because you can't find ANYBODY to paint for less than highway robbery. Everything else was up to Jeff.
Is Jeff licensed? Funny you should ask.
When I found him in the Yellow Pages in the spring of 2004, he had a BBB tag at the end of his half page ad. Now, I happen to work for the phone company and I know that those ads cost a lot of money. A LOT of money. I saw the BBB reference so I checked him out there. No complaints.
Now, I'm not completely stupid. I know that it is VERY difficult to lodge a complaint at the Better Business Bureau. You can't just complain about a company that screwed you over. You have to document that you tried to resolve it with the company and they were not responsive, or would not resolve your complaint to your satisfaction. But you can't get screwed and then complain at the BBB about it.
So if you check out a company at the BBB and they have even one complaint? Run, don't walk, as far away as you can. Because for every 1 complaint at the BBB there are probably 50 more where people couldn't be bothered to go through the hassle it takes to file a complaint in the first place.
But Jeff had no complaints when I hired him.
About 6 months ago I checked him out again and he had 3. AND, there was a disclaimer at the bottom of his listing that said his ad in the Yellow Pages claims he is a member of the BBB, but he is not, and never has been, a member of the Better Business Bureau.
So, yeah, I consider the little things he screwed me about to be minor. Annoying, but pretty minor.
The plans were done by a designer. No, he was not an architect
and that was the first thing he told me when I met with him. He never claimed to be one. And he did make mistakes. He had two sets of french doors on the back wall. One was supposed to be in the bedroom suite and the other was on the same back wall leading from the kitchen/great room to the deck. Lenny told me there was no way to put french doors on that wall. There was no room for a header. The roof line was so low that it wasn't possible.
So we moved the french doors to the gable end of the garage structure for the great room. And Lenny REALLY tried to talk me out of having a door in the master bedroom leading to the deck. But I REALLY wanted a door there. My first house had sliders to a deck from the master bedroom and I really wanted that door. I've always had dogs and it's nice to have a door in the bedroom to just let them out. I wanted that door.
So Lenny custom ordered the door for me. It's pretty cheap. It's like cork that has vinyl clad on it. It's not a full sized door, it's a lot shorter than a full sized door would be. But you reall can't tell.
I think he felt so guilty about the cheap door he got me for the bedroom that he went all out and got me great french doors for the great room. Those are really nice doors.
