Tracy Hagler

Tracy Hagler was recommended to me by a good friend and I was told that he was a ?good Christian man? and a deacon in his church. Tracy told me that he had about 30 years experience so I figured I could trust him to do a good job. I asked him to prepare the bathroom walls so that I could paint them. There was wood paneling on top of the sheetrock and he removed some of the wood paneling and left some up. I?m not sure why all of it wasn?t removed. In the process of removing this paneling, he whacked up and spliced my crown molding. I had no intention of repainting the molding and certainly didn?t plan on replacing it. He said he could repair the molding and I would never notice that it had been messed up. Wrong. He patched it with latex stretch caulk and the caulk is all globbed up and messy looking. I let him know I wasn?t happy with it and he told me he could replace it and told me about what it would cost. He screwed it up and told me I would have to pay to have it replaced. He continued to mud the walls and never could get them right. That was starting to concern me. In the meantime, he laid new tile in the bathroom. When he finished, I noticed that he cut some pieces uneven and laid some tiles higher than the others, making the floor unlevel. Because of the tile being unlevel there will be gaps under the baseboards when they?re replaced. I gave Tracy $300 up front to buy a new toilet and supplies. He bought the wrong color toilet and it?s been on my back porch since August. He gave me three receipts and said he had another with stuff he bought for another job on it. He had no business mixing supplies for two different jobs on one receipt. On one of the three receipts he gave me, I saw that he bought a drilling hammer, floor chisel, screwdriver & knife set, grout float, grouting gloves. Now wouldn?t you think that a man who does this sort of work for a living would already have these things? If he didn?t have them, he should have discussed it with me before going out and spending my money to buy them. He also bought a flood light bulb and garage door lubricant with my money ? still trying to figure out what those two things had to do with a bathroom remodel. Tracy dumped a lot of sheetrock mud right off my back porch and I had to dig up big hardened clumps of it. He used my new vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the fine dust from sanding sheetrock mud. I was later told that only a shop vac should be used for that because the fine dust could ruin a regular vacuum cleaner. I found sheetrock mud fingerprints in odd places all around my house. On September 11, Tracy asked for a ?draw? of $600 because he ?had a power bill due?. I promptly wrote him a check for $600. I told him about my concerns with his work and he assured me everything would be done right and that I would be ?thrilled? when he was done. I kept getting more and more uneasy with this guy so I sent him a letter and told him I was putting the remodel on hold until I could find someone to do the job right. I asked him for an invoice but he never gave me one. I also asked for the other receipt and asked him to either bring me the tools he bought with my money or pay me for them. He ignored that letter, so about a week later I sent him a certified letter that he signed for. He ignored that one too. Someone pointed out to me that the edge of the pipe that the toilet attaches to was broken, and it would cause a leak if it wasn?t fixed.. I paid a plumber $135 to replace the pipe. Tracy never bothered to tell me he broke that pipe and I might have had a leak and never known it. I hired someone else to put in the countertop and toilet. Because of the tiles being unlevel, shims had to be used to keep the toilet from wobbling. When the countertop was installed, instead of it being flush against the wall, it only touches the wall in three places. This is due to the botched up job Tracy did on the sheetrock. If there was any money left out of the $300 I gave him, he never bothered giving it back to me. He never paid me for the tools he bought with my money and kept (isn?t that called STEALING?). And he never gave me the fourth receipt so I don?t know what else he bought with my money. I ended up spending $900 and all I got was a botched up remodel job. It creeps me out to think I let such a dishonest man in my house to work while was away from home.