J M Construction

I have had major renovations to a home before, and never in my life have I had such a bad experience as I did with JM construction. First off, the hired help was unskilled and the workmanship was shoddy. JM frequently brought his 14 year old son to the job and charge me 30 dollars an hour for this. The original "estimate" was, of course, far surpassed as work progressed, and I was forced to stay with this contractor because the job site was such a mess (nobody else would take the job). Jon would never communicate with me before he made devastating decisions. For instance, instead of installing the support beam for the addition tie-in to the house ABOVE the ceiling, I came home to a bunch boards sandwiched together across the ceiling of my kitchen (in the first third-oh so ugly) extending down from the ceiling at least 18 inches & a massive 8 inches wide. Imagine a stack of lumber pressed up against your ceiling of your kitchen in the first quarter or third of the way into your kitchen. I was agast. When I asked why he couldn't support the addition from ABOVE the ceiling (above the ceiling was a roof) as you would with a notched beam, he said "well, I knew the city would approve it this way". I refused to keep the eyesore (it extended LOWER than the height of the cupboards). HE CHARGED ME TO RE DO IT. Another example of these poor decisions: wall tile around a sink that ENDS 3 inches too soon so the sink is splashing water on the wall. Not to mention it just looks like someone ran out of tile and stopped. (There was extra tile remaining). Or the time when a heating duct from the first to the second floor had to be moved from a wall when the addition was put on. Instead of re-routing in a manner that would have fit with the design of the rest of the house (registers were in the WALLS), I came home to a new hole cut into the floor of the room that was two feet away from any wall. WHY this couldn't have been moved a few feet over to a wall is beyond me. This eyesore is still in the room...it's not like it's even at the edge of the floor. It's more toward the center of the room, but in a really off center kind of way. He installed a high end tub and used a plumber that had no idea how to deal with high end fittings. The drain pipe to the tub was installed wrong, and everything leaked through to the ceiling below which stained the ceiling (coved, plastered, high ceilings). I asked Jon what he was going to do to fix it. He said "bleach it". Again, I was shocked. You can't use BLEACH on plaster. I had to buy a stain blocking primer and fix this MYSELF. Jon didn't. The tub has since tipped (it's a slipper tub) because the bolts jon used for the feet weren't the locking kind. This caused the water lines to break and flood. I had to have it all reinstalled. (This time by a plumber that knew what he was doing). When the foundation was dug, Jon destroyed my yard. He removed a fence and dumped gravel in the yard to allow for equipment into the yard. He BURIED a flagstone patio, ALL of my plants/landscaping (I had an extensively landscaped yard) was unprotected and buried in dirt and gravel, and a double retaining wall was destroyed. When the fence was reinstalled, it was not even done with post holes...post holes were literally 6" deep. When I complained about the yard, jon CHARGED ME for the time his employee dug up the flagstones and randomly set them in the dirt. No sand, no border stones, nothing like it was. And the fence fell down the next year. How is the house now? The kitchen floor has cracked in two places all the way across the kitchen. The tile is cracked and the grout won't stay in. The tiles creak and move when we walk on the floor. We've had this accessed to fix, and, you guessed it, the problem is structural. The only way to fix it is to have the floor torn up, shimmed, and new tile relaid. The bathroom shower (travertine tile) corner joints (all four including around the flooring) all crack wide open every year or two. I have now twice used a drill to break out the old grout and regrout the gaping cracks. Yes, this was an entirely "new" portion of the home and should not be doing this. All of the walls of the addition (new walls) are visibly WAVY, and the sills of the recessed windows in the basement are in the shape of a parallelogram. IE NOT square. When I complained about the wavy walls, his "help" (a kid that was stoned most of the time) couldn't seem to mud them so they'd appear square. Because I was being charged for the time, I finally said "ok, nevermind". In every room, the drywall tape has come off the walls, and the walls around some of the new windows have cracked all the way around the window edges. I finally was in a position to fire Jon (the house wasn't a gaping hole to the winter outside). I STILL haven't finished the work, but this is what I did so far: removed all the gravel from the yard, unburied mulched borders, replanted plants, removed the flagstone "patio" he said he redid and removed the fence and rebuilt it all. I rebuilt the ruined retaining walls, and painted half of the interior walls. I finally got the granite installed in the kitchen (I fired jon when there was only plywood for countertops). I'm now back to repairing walls and trying to caulk and plaster cracks. I'll have to retape, mud, and repaint the walls. I've already mentioned the floor of the kitchen. I'm working on installing cupboards for the laundry. And since jon took all my savings (remember, he "bid" the job and then charged hourly), I've done this work myself. Never, ever hire this man what ever you do. You will be so incredibly sorry. A great contractor? That would be L J Roth Reconstruction Inc. They restored my home in 1992 (house fire) and did a lovely job. I didn't hire them for my addition because I was too inpatient. I didn't want to wait for LJ Roth's schedule (they are busy!). It was a huge, expensive, and sorry mistake. Do NOT hire J M construction whatever you do.

Great! I highly recommend JM Construction.