Upton's Construction

Description of Work: This started on April 11,2012 with a water leak behind a kitchen wall. Which instead of leaking on the floor, it ran down the back, onto a concrete wall and under the house, for an undetermined amount of time. So we contacted our insurance company and made the claim. It was decided that all cabinets and the floor and 6 of the floor joists would need to be replaced. The insurance sent the checks out with the checks payable to Jimmy And Michelle Kersey and Wells Fargo Mortgage. Which were then sent to mortgage company and held for final documents and then 1/3 increments of disbursement. Then we found Mr. Dale Upton of Upton’s Construction and he agreed to do repairs of the whole job with the exception of painting. So on May 11,2012 contract was signed and on June 1,2012 he was given first installment of $5097.28 and demolition and mold removal began on June 4,2012. Mr. Upton informed me on this day that by Wednesday or Thursday he would be half way done and ready for Wells Fargo Home Inspector to come see job and send out his next 1/3 installment of money. Well home inspector (Misty Denny of NCS, Mortgage Contracting Service,) came out on June 8,2012 and had a lot of questions. She wanted to know how this was considered half way done when the only thing in kitchen was a ply wood floor and newly installed insulation and drywall only screwed on wall, not even seemed together yet. She told us at this point we should be cautious of this contractor. So we contacted our local code enforcement office and told them of our situation and they told us permits should be pulled for all this work. They asked us for his name so they could look up his licensing and that is when we were informed he was not state licensed. Mr. Upton was informed of this and said that was not true he did not need permits ,but if it made us feel better we could pull the permit, again we were told by the building code office we could not do that only a state licensed contractor could pull the permit for this kind of work. So Mr. Upton contacted them and told them what was being done and the inspector(Justin Beaudua) came out looked at work and said all was ok. Well red flags were going up so we had one of our friends who works in construction come over to help us and look over job and he said their was no way that we did not need a permit to do this work. And that work that had been done had not been done right. The floor was not even stable it had bounce to it, where he scabbed wood together their was no bracing and that plywood that was installed was not even pressure treated. And their was no barrier between concrete and wood. Insulation was installed wrong. So Mr. Upton was called to our house on June 17,2012 to discuss quality of work and the issues we were having. He agreed to come back Monday morning (June 18,2012) and fix work. Monday night when we looked we noticed not only was the plywood screwed down it was also nailed so their was no way to remove plywood to check what had been done. So in order for the work to be checked my husband crawled under the house and to his disgust he found that the support to hold up house was a broken brick with some scrap wood holding a piece of 2x4 to support the floor and that there was still rotten wood and joists under house. Mr. Upton was called on June 19,2012 and asked if we could meet about the situation. And he very quickly said no, if we had a problem with his work we should find another contractor because he quit. So we asked for a refund of the funds and he said were not getting a dime back. We then contacted our insurance company and mortgage company and let them know what was going on and they informed us we would need to take legal action to get our money back. And we could not even hire another contractor until he sends a letter stating we owe him, no money. We sent him a certified letter, which will be included , informing him he breached the contract when he quit and for doing unsatisfactory work. He replied by email , which will also be included, stating he did not quit, he just can not work for Jimmy and he would be charging us $100.00 a day for cabinets until they are out of his garage. We then replied back that after all of this we do not want him or the cabinets he has he can keep them. We just want our money and a letter stating we owe him no money. That night his wife called us crying that they don’t have any money and would we take these cabinets out of there garage, she will make Dale come apologize for being so rude. We told her no if he installs cabinets like he did the floor we could not risk it. And we were sorry that they spent that money but we also don’t have $5097.28 to just throw away. Nothing he did was to completion. He never even removed whole floor an only replace one floor joist. Where did all that money go? And she just said they don’t have the money. We went to the city code office on June 22, 2012 and showed them the pictures of the work that was done, and although the inspector that came to our house was not there ,he was out for vacation or something, his boss was there and was shocked by this, he can not understand why his inspector would have said such a thing because many permits should have been pulled for this job. They contacted Mr. Upton with request for his documentation of licensing and he told them he has no state license and he has been doing work like this for years and has never needed to get a permit ;and they informed him he has then been breaking the law for years. Were then told to contact the State Attorney and pursue this.