James E Lesniak

Jim Lesniak is a general contractor who happens to live in our condo high-rise. His residence/business address, plus an adjacent condo unit next door used as a staging area for his business, are in his girlfriend?s name. He seemed to know about remodeling units in our building and talked a good story-line. Jim took our $16,000 deposit (out of a total of $28,000 for the whole kitchen renovation) January 21st and indicated he needed the money for cabinets and appliances.  He estimated cabinet delivery on February 15th, which came and went. To meet this contractural commitment, he should have ordered our cabinets the day he received our initial payment. It had turned-out that he never ordered our custom cabinets- and lied about their existence and progress from the moment we gave him the money to order the cabinets.
 
 He repeatedly assured us that he would not demolish the kitchen until he was sure cabinets were ready so that we would not be without a kitchen for an extended period.  At this point, we might have seen him once every 2-3 weeks, and he performed minimal work with very little progress.
 
Still without a firm delivery date for our cabinets, Jim demolished our kitchen the week of April 15, put up a new wall and did some wiring.  That was the only progress until he put in the floor at the end of May. 
 
We became increasingly worried that Jim did not have our deposit money that we gave him for our project anymore.  In early June he produced 2 receipts showing down payments on cabinets, but they didn't specifically reference our job.  On July 2, the cabinet maker confirmed he had no orders in process for Jim so the receipts must have been either fabricated or for another job.
 
In July, after Jim arrived twice at our home severely intoxicated, we hired a new contractor and re-ordered cabinets and appliances.  The new contractor identified numerous problems with the work Jim had completed, including electrical work which was not up to code, and would also require removing kitchen cabinets and expensive tile on one wall to perform any future repairs.  We had found out that another resident in our building had taken Jim Lesniak to court and won a $420,000 settlement in-part for the same negligent , dangerous wiring and construction practices used for our own project. We had to remove all of Jim?s electrical work, and pay to have it redone correctly and to city electrical code.
 
Our kitchen was finally functional shortly before Thanksgiving.  We had been without a kitchen for 7 months, and when confronted with this fact, Jim nor his girlfriend appeared to have absolutely no regrets.  In a deposition he had to give for a previous lawsuit against a neighbor/owner in our building, he claims to have completed 40-50 remodeling jobs in our building. If a fraction of them included any electrical wiring, we?re living in a 30-story, potential electrical wiring fire trap.
 
At the end of July our attorney sent a letter demanding that Jim repay the approximately $13,000 he owed us.  He has repeatedly promised to make good, but it is over 5 months later and we have not received any money. He ignores phone calls and emails. The only way to contact him is to fool him and use phone numbers he?s doesn?t know.
 
This guy and his girlfriend are not only a couple of crooks who have stolen thousands of dollars ($220,000 at last count) from his own neighbors, but his work is negligent, irresponsible, and dangerous.  
I recently heard he fled town,but if he's still around, don?t have anything to do with this guy.

We did a complete remodel of a high rise condo with Jim Lesniak. We have very mxed feelings about the experience because we love our remodeled space but didn't get everything that we wanted, it certainly wasn't timely, and we would not recommend him.

He has very good ideas and is a great person to work with from the standpoint of design without hiring an architect. But don't count on a schedule being followed. If a more profitable job becomes available progress on your job will stop while he focuses on it. He claimed we kept adding to the project. That's true. We did end up doing more than we originally planned because his prices are incredibly reasonable but he failed to even start the project before the original finish point passed. The original project was to be completed by the end of December. Mid November we essentially boxed and moved out of our unit. They did the demo before Thanksgiving and then never did any work until the next year. His claim is that we added a lot of work which is true but he never even began the initial remodel until after when he said he'd have the original work done.

The other issue is that although he has great ideas he's not a good listener. My wife wanted to put in a tile backsplash and he simply refused to do it...said we should just do granite counter and backsplash. I didn't even want to use granite! What we have is great but it was strange to not be able to get what we wanted. (we've purchased additonal properties since then and done removedels and we learned a lot from this one)

Ultimately, a number of final finishings were not completed by Lesniak. We made the mistake of giving him a final payment and then he never showed up again. Phone calls to him always got voice mail and no return call. For giggles I called him from a number he wouldn't recognize and guess what.? No voice mail, he answered! He blubbered how he meant to get back to us. Never spoke to him again. We would not recommend this bozo. He has talent but lacks business ethics...and common sense! He could have gotten a lot of work through us. We use Chris Kosecki now. We do recommend him.

By February 2009, we still had not heard from Jim. At this point, we told him to forget it as we decided to sell our place and it was on the market. He had not even ordered the door yet! We have tried numerous times to get our $600 deposit back from Mr. Lesniak with nothing but false promises that the check is in the mail and he is dropping it off tomorrow, etc. We have had numerous phone and written communications to no avail. It is now May 2009 and there has been no work and we have yet to receive our deposit back. We likely will be foreced to pursue legal options in order to get the deposit refunded. DO NOT WORK WITH JAMES E. LESNIAK! You will regret it. He is not true to his word and is a thief.