Alchemy Construction Inc

The worst mistake I have made in my entire home building project was choosing to work with Alchemy Construction, and I am posting this review in hopes that there exists in the public domain information about Alchemy that I didn?t have in making my choice.  They demonstrably build exceptional homes for the wealthy, but they cannot be trusted with a limited budget for the average person, in my case roughly $200K. Before signing a pre-construction services agreement with Alchemy, I wanted to make sure my limited budget was realistic, and they told me that it was "totally do-able with my design.?  During the design phase Mr. Bohner made recommendations of major changes without reference to their costs, such as an exotic double-stud exterior wall, a hydronically rather than conventionally cooled wine room/pantry, and expensive Kohler plumbing fixtures, among other things. Mr. Bohner often said he was ?interested in your house because we want to build something a member of my crew could afford.?  However, less expensive options that were not part of the standard Alchemy repertoire were shot down immediately.   In reviewing the initial house design, I not Mr. Bohner caught an error in the interior foundation footing that had to be changed.  In retrospect I wonder what I paid him for during this time, except to give him the opportunity to influence the design towards something he wanted to build.  As another example, during the estimating process I had to actively tell Mr. Bohner not to estimate putting radiant heat in my garage, something I never even requested but he felt it was a good idea since we were pouring a concrete slab anyhow.  It soon became clear that instead of finding ways to meet my "totally do-able? budget, Mr. Bohner was simply going about his usual, very materially-intensive and therefore expensive approach to ?green? building, as well as trying out some new experiments he wanted to do at my expense.  This would have been perfectly fine if my target budget were kept in mind, but Mr. Bohner?s first estimate was $391,485 for my 1240 sq ft, 2 bd, 2 ba home, and didn?t even have all the necessary items in it like the septic system, countertops, and the second floor finish.  This is over $300/sq ft for a home with drywall returns on the windows, concrete floors, and similarly inexpensive finishes.  Other contractors I?ve talked to who?ve seen the plans laugh out loud when they hear Alchemy?s figure.  Most importantly, such a build price would never be fundable with a construction loan, as I had warned Alchemy earlier.  Mr. Bohner states that he only bids what is designed, but he fails to take responsibility for being deeply involved in the design process, nor does he take responsibility for being the only and final arbiter of costs, which aren?t communicated to the client until after that very expensive design process that contains his unaffordable recommendations. Mr. Bohner stated that this is his usual process, to make recommendations in which the client conceives of their ?dream house? and then finds that they have to scale back, but in my case it seems to have been in many ways Mr. Bohner?s dream house because what was scaled back were mostly his recommendations.  Meanwhile, the client is left paying for the re-design. At our first meeting after the estimate, Mr. Bohner admitted and said he was sorry that he had told me $200k was feasible, but did nothing further to make amends.  Instead, he began a process to justify his sky-high costs.  He showed me a copy of Fine Homebuilding magazine with a small house that was built for over $300/sq ft as if to justify his bid.  Let?s just say that house did not have drywall returns on the window casings, among other things.  Mr. Bohner also tried to justify the high cost of his bid by making reference to locally built generic, non-green homes selling for $156/sq ft, roughly my target, not acknowledging that they were being built for far less than the profit they were being sold for.  Contradicting what he told me before signing the pre-construction agreement, Mr. Bohner also then stated that in fact it was NOT possible for Alchemy to build my 2 story, attached garage design for my budget, and instead gave me a Blu Homes brochure stating that I could only afford a 1 story garageless home.  He failed to also represent that Blu Homes, though factory-built, are architect-designed and steel framed with high-end finishes, much higher in cost than my owner-designed, basic, stick-framed home.  He said that he had worked with clients before on Blu Homes, which means he had this knowledge prior to telling me that a 2 story home with garage was "totally do-able? earlier in the year.  Apparently in an effort to get me to raise my budget, Mr. Bohner also made reference to the fact that my salary could support a higher loan amount.  He also made a cryptic reference to a Zillow search in my neighborhood containing homes selling for much more than my build budget, as if to imply it was too low, but of course a house is not the only factor in the value of a property.  After Mr. Bohner?s first estimate and these efforts to rationalize his excessive costs, I would have walked away had I not been locked into their pre-construction ?services? agreement with the threat of being billed for their time.   Being locked into their agreement, I tried to find ways to bring costs down so the project could move forward, which consisted in removing all of Mr. Bohner?s suggestions but also fundamental elements of my original "totally do-able? design, such as exterior decking, and paying for things out of pocket, such as buying and installing myself less expensive plumbing fixtures, painting the interior of the house, and doing the cabinets.   During this time I began to see that Mr. Bohner?s figures when broken apart did not sum back to figures on the original estimate, and I learned that the prices of the Kohler fixture component of the estimate was $8,991, when I had been told that their cost would ?would be below retail for sure.?  Certainly there is mark-up and installation cost in the $8,991 figure, but it did look like I would have been paying something close to the full retail of $7300.  Be aware that Alchemy is truly a general contractor-- the sub-contract for almost all services, which inflates prices as mark-up is added to mark-up.  When a second, unnecessary, and expensive design process ensued in which Alchemy?s recommendations were completely pulled from the design, expensive errors of omission also had to be corrected at this time. Mr. Bohner failed to suggest concrete for the 2nd floor of my home earlier in the design process, something I didn?t know was possible, even though he had done it before and it was the appropriate, least expensive floor option to provide thermal mass for my passive solar design like I had on the 1st floor.  Again, what services or value was I receiving from him during the design phase?  As it became clear that Mr. Bohner?s costs, even with the house stripped down to less than my original "totally do-able? design and with me paying for things out of pocket and doing work myself, were still coming in many tens of thousands of dollars over my "totally do-able? budget, I decided I had to have the plans competitively bid by other contractors as is standard practice in the construction industry.  Always being open and honest with Mr. Bohner, I called him directly to let him know what I had decided, and he immediately, unilaterally, and pre-emptively pulled out of our pre-construction agreement, though it had no language about exclusivity pre-construction.  Alchemy then billed me for payments they?d made on my behalf for permits and design, as well as $6500 for their time ?consulting.?  To their credit they state that they capped their hours at 100, but their vague invoice lacked any line-item accounting of their time so even 100 hours seems arbitrary.  Their consulting ?se