A & J CONSTRUCTION & REAL ESTATE

At first, Jack seemed to know what he was doing. He works with predominantly European (and Brazilian) subcontractors - who generally did a good job. However, problems appeared early on - he came to us after to ask for more money for the electrical work than what he had agreed to in the contract. I agreed to pay a portion of what he asked (he had, in fact, badly underestimated) but then he did this again - for carpentry work, for masonry work - all things that had been agreed upon in the contract. Overall most of the work was adequate, and his carpenters were quite skilled - though there were errors made. His masonry contractors built a brick wall on a muddy slab (under his supervision) casing major leaking at every rain. Other smaller errors were made, many uncorrected. Finally, after receiving my punch list and realizing he was going to have trouble fixing the leaking basement, Jack quit, leaving an unfinished, flawed project. Work that was done took three times longer than promised.