Ethington Construction

We hired Ethington Construction to remodel the inside and outside of our home in late 2008. Mr. Ethington cut corners everywhere. Some of his subcontractors did good work but others were only fair and his granite installers and painters were awful. We are still discovering problems everywhere. He didn't replace any insulation where walls and ceilings were redone and did not properly reconnect air ducts - he used cheap duct tape instead of the correct foil type and the joints became disconnected from at least two registers. The house gets hot and the A/C system works constantly during the summer with an average electric bill of over $400 during hot periods and we have a cold house during the winter. In the Master Bath, the bathroom exhaust fan vents into the attic instead of outside. The sink faucet hot water line is plugged or the pipe is kinked - water comes out very slowly. The walk-in shower is a disaster - Travertine tile was improperly sealed and excess grout was not removed. The walls keep developing pits and holes. Mr. Ethington tried to fit a standard sliding door for a 5-foot bathtub into the 4-foot-wide entrance to the walk-in shower. We would have had to stoop and twist our bodies to enter and exit the shower. We eventually paid another contractor $830 to install a proper door. Cabinet doors and handles were improperly attached (two-screw handles were only attached with 1 screw) and hinge screws were not tightened or were over-tightened and stripped. The painter used improper paint in humid areas (kitchen and baths) and generally did poor work - with improper prep, poor color joints between walls and ceilings, missed areas, drips and runs everywhere. Electrical wires were spliced outside of electrical boxes, violating building codes. The stucco subcontractors missed areas and covered over the cleanout for the bathroom. They came back to find it, drilled a 3/4 inch hole all the way through the outside wall and left it that way. They also got stucco all over the outsides of the windows, which we had to scrape off ourselves. The granite countertops were badly scratched in several places during installation. Mr. Ethington had another contractor look at it and then left the repairs undone. He also jury-rigged the gas line for the range. I had to replace and/or tighten the pipes. The gates of a dog-ear fence that he built sagged and I had to reinforce them. The fence was also only painted with one coat of white primer and left unfinished. I will have to finish the painting. He installed cheap, squeaky hinges on the linen closet after the painters painted over the original ones. The new ones squeaked and didn?t close properly. We had a cabinet maker replace them afterwards.