Pizzolongo Home Improvements

Horrible! He told me it would take couple of days to do the job and turned out to almost a month and communication on days he was coming to work was none. I had to call all the time to see if he was going to show up. When the job finally finish 8months later the job he hired a man to come do the plum was done poorly and had to pay for a professional plumber to come and he pulled out tubing that was cut in half and it was matter of time till it bust and it did. Won’t recommend him to anyone.

At the time that we hired Mr. Pizzolongo we were awaiting the final closing on the purchase of our house.  We had met him earlier through a couple with whom we are very close and we believed that he could be counted on to do the job. We could not have been more mistaken.
     Mr. Pizzolongo very patiently waited for the closing on the sale to take place. He occasionally hinted to us that he was putting off other job opportunities and that he would prefer to begin work as soon as possible. He wanted to know if we could advance him some of the money. Prior to the closing we paid him $5000 dollars to replace the windows to keep him on board as our general contractor. 
    He took the check for the services we thought he was going to perform and for a couple of days the job seemed to be moving forward. Within less than a week he began to call and cancel the days he had scheduled to work on our house. After a while he stopped calling at all and we began a game of cat and mouse with Mr. Pizzolongo which lasted a better part of a year and half. This contractor seemed to feel that our house renovation was not as important as some of the other jobs he was doing and the entire situation turned into a disaster. The renovation was not completed. We were left with an unfinished mess which are still trying to unravel.
     The following is a list of some but not all of the issues which remain outstanding;
      1). Kitchen
            The repairs to the walls of the kitchen looked, and still look, as if they had been done by a child. The plaster and drywall repairs were very poorly finished and the paint was sloppily  applied and has never been fully completed.
            The cabinets were improperly hung and the doors are still completely uneven and the contractor never owned up to his promise to make them right.
            The contractor cut the opening for the sink unevenly. This ruined the counter top and the contractor attempted to correct the problem by apply heaps of adhesive around the sink. He also bent the edges of the sink. The only solution is to this problem is to replace the entire counter and sink.
            The contractor did not caulk the floor tiles correctly and the caulking fell apart almost immediately. He came back once and refilled some of the spaces between the tiles and only made it look worse. By the way Mr. Pizzolongo advertises himself as a tile specialist. 
            The contractor was supposed to install an new kitchen door. This door is the principal door used to enter and exit the house.  He twice ordered the wrong size door and those wrong doors sat on the floor of our enclosed porch for about six months while Mr. Pizzolongo struggled to find a window of opportunity to stop by and remedy the problem. He eventually relented and installed the door nearly six months later and left a substantial gap between the bottom of the door and the floor through which we lose an enormous amount of heat.
            Everything the contractor did in our kitchen could only be described as a total mess.
        2). Upstairs bathroom             
            The tiles were installed incorrectly and have been falling apart since the beginning. He said he would fix the problem and never did.
            The tub was not put in correctly and has never been even. 
            The grout on the tub was not applied correctly and the contractor never fulfilled his promise to make that right. It's pathetic.                              
           The plumbing he performed on the tub was done ineptly and because of his failure to be sure the pipes were properly replaced we now have a hopelessly backed up bathtub drain. The water has now begun to leak through the downstairs kitchen ceiling. The downstairs kitchen ceiling is ruined. I had a competent plumber confirm today that this was caused by Mr. Pizzolongo's failure to replace the necessary plumbing before he installed the tub.  This is going to cause us to have completely re-renovate the bathroom as well as fix the kitchen ceiling that has been destroyed. The "new" bathroom he installed has lasted barely five years and now we are going to have to pay thousands of dollars to rectify the situation.
         3). Windows
             The windows the contractor installed were not properly insulated around the frames and have leaked heat and caused our heating bill to go through the roof. These windows were supposed to be efficient. They may have to be removed and installed again.
          4). Paint
              The paint work the contractor performed was awful. The paint was applied unevenly. The interior window frames were painted in a sloppy and uneven manner and look terrible. Fortunately we broke off our relationship with Mr. Pizzolongo before he could do more damage in this department. We hired a truly professional house painter who knew what he was doing and we were able to save ourselves any grief as it relates to getting the interior walls of the rest of the house finished.           
           This writer could say a great deal more about the disaster that resulted from our dealings with Mr. Pizzolongo but I think you guys get the point. He proved at to be the kind of contractor a home owner has to thoroughly babysit during a home renovation. He pretty much failed to do any of what he promised he would. He caused what should have been a fun and rewarding experience to turn into a nightmare and a heartbreak.
           There's an obvious lesson to be learned here from our experience. We blame ourselves for not having been sufficiently attentive and careful in this endeavor but we also feel that Mr Pizzolongo of Pizzolongo Home Improvements deliberately failed us and is a dishonest general contractor. He had no problem taking our money but had a big problem doing what he was being paid to do. We are currently investigating wether or not the State of Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection might be able to help us out but it may be too late.