Noel Diesen Elf and Company

We met with Noel on our first trip to Florida the week of Oct 13th. He was to start working on our unit and have the above work completed before we returned to Florida November 29th to help finish up the job. We had ordered a new kitchen from Ikea that was delivered the day after we arrived Saturday Nov 30th. Noel was to work that week beginning Monday Dec 2nd. When we arrived in Florida, we were surprised and disappointed by how little he had gotten done in the month and one half. Some painting had been done, ceilings looked good, but walls were painted, not edged, all of the switch plate covers had been painted right over, not even unscrewed to paint around, the paint had been rolled right over the baseboard trim. He had done a little of the plaster work, but clearly hadn't spent much time on it, probably one plaster applications, and it was far from finished. The carpet and pad had been removed in the bedroom, and carpet was removed in the living area. None of the nails or wood carpet strips had been removed. The old kitchen and furniture had been removed, but the old water heater was still hooked up and there was no sign of the new water heater. We were billed on 11/08/2013 $1384.00 for work and materials, we paid Noel upon receipt of his bill. Of the $1384.00 billed, $1046.00 was charged for a new hot water heater, copper pipes & connectors, shut off valves, wire, breakers, and conduit all of this we were unable to find on site. We were not too worried, assuming he would bring them in on Monday, our scheduled appointment, to help us install the kitchen, and to finish the project. He did't show up Monday morning as we expected him, he called us at 11am and said he had a Veterinarian emergency, and that he would call us later that day to give us an update. We never heard from him again. We made attempts to reach him that night, Tuesday morning and again on Wednesday morning but these phone calls went unanswered and our messages went unreturned. With a December 8th rental commitment looming,(Mr. Diesen was aware of this time frame), we were given no choices but to try and put this condo together ourselves. When we returned to MN we emailed him requesting reimbursement for billed materials that were not provided but got no response. With few options leftwe contacted a lawyer and sent him a demand letter. To our surprise he called, very unhappy, and proceeded to accuse us of delaying the project because we purchased the kitchen cabinets on line instead of wiring him the money. He went on to say we owed him more money that he had not yet invoiced us for.