Flint Architects

To start, a little background about us: I am an insurance executive who manages a team of 15 people focusing on coverages for classified government contracts overseas. My wife is a professor at a very well-known University. The reason you need to know this is that we are very honest, credible, people who have proven our trustworthiness time and time again to get us in the positions we are in today. When we first starting working with Flint he advertised himself similar to “Fixer Upper” where you give him a budget and he handles all aspects of the design and construction, “turn-key” as Flit called it. This is great and what we wanted. My wife and I had just gotten engaged and we were looking to put an addition on my current house so we can start a family. For these services Flint was to make 10% of the total construction cost. Verbally it was not to exceed more than 150K which would be a total cost to Flint for 15K. We were absolutely fine with that. From the beginning we told Flint this was a NO RUSH project, we were worrying about a wedding and adjusting to married life, but we wanted to get this going to break ground in a year or so. We told Flint our budget was 150K we could possibly go over that 10K-20K but really needed to stay close to that. In the first part of the design process Flint asked us to write a list of everything we wanted in a house, our DREAM list as he called it. We did this and they came up with a design doing an addition on my current house. The first meeting we went to, to see the design, we were told that the cost would be 250K (for our dream home). We thought to yourself maybe we should just wait another year and just build our dream house!! We made an adjustment to the drawings (added on a small screened in porch in the front) and all of a sudden Flint told us the new cost would be around 600K?! We were shocked that adding on a small porch would drive up the cost from 250K to 600K. We asked Flint to readjust the drawing to get us to the 150K range. He did this over an 8 month period (this was totally fine with us as we were not in a rush). The new addition ended up being just adding a simple second floor to the new house. 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Flint assured us, this addition would be in right around 150K to complete so we asked him to move forward with the construction drawings. To be clear all we were asking for was a second story. While we were working on the drawings my family and I were working on redoing the existing 1st floor. We kept the same footprint just upgraded with updates where needed. Flint said he was not a kitchen designed and referred us to have a kitchen expert come up with a design for us and he would add it to the existing plan so that everything was all together. We did this, hired another designer and gave the plans to Flint which he added to the drawing in front of us in about 10 minutes. After all of this Flint supplied us with “preliminary” constructions drawings that we were to use to apply to the bank for a loan. Due to several unforeseen circumstances we were not approved for our 150K loan. We informed flint that we were not able to obtain financing and to not due any more work on our drawings. Flint said he was sorry to hear that and he would stop where he was at. At this stopping point we had paid Flint just under 12K to get to where we were at. About 2 months later we received an email from flint stating that he received bids back on our project coming 250K to 285K. He was “cutting us a deal” and only requesting an additional 8K on top of the 12K we already paid him for a total of 20K. He was going to waive the additional 5K (based off of 10% of 250K we should have owed Flint 25K) to try and help us out given our financial situation. At this point we never discussed the details of what we wanted (ex, floors, windows, furnishings,) and we never received completed, stamped, and approved by the county architectural drawings. Flint refused to answer the phone to discuss. We sent an email to him saying we did not owe that much on a project that was never going to happen. He replied with, I’m sorry about your situation but what is owed is what is owned. About 30 days after this we were served with a collection notice. At this point I took the liberty of taking the half completed drawing we had and tried to get some quotes from some local contractors to compare to what Flint came up with. I received 1 quote for 135K and another for 185K, the biggest difference in the pricing was due to the types of floors. I asked how it was possible to Flint to get these other quote with such a significant difference (100K) in total cost. All of the contractors I approached said the drawing were too sloppy to give an accurate quote. We were not sure how Flint was able to come up with his numbers. After lots of digging and discussions with experts we found out that Flint was charging us for a complete new house. (He was only hired to do a second story addition) He was also including about 50K for a kitchen that he didn’t even design and that was already completed… why should Flint make an additional 5K for something he didn’t design and was never supposed to include in the bid and never built? Another interesting issue that came to light was the windows he picked for our house were the most expensive type of window / design you can get. The price difference in the windows design that was currently on the house and the one Flint designed was a 30K difference for the same size windows!? We ended up going hiring a lawyer and going to trial on this with Flint. Ultimately the just ruled in favor of Flint and we had to pay him an additional 8K. The reasoning was that Flint’s contract was so tight we could not get out of it. The law does not incorporate morals. The judge ruled in favor of Flint off of a construction bid quote that he received by txt message that was never sent to us. (Still never sent to us to this day). The judge would not let us use the quotes we received in the trial because the contract we signed specially said Flint was the only one who could come up with quotes. Also since we did not ask Flint to stop working on our project (by certified mail) he was free to continue to move forward on his own and charge us back for his time. The judge was nice enough to require Flint send us stamped drawing (NOT approved by the county) upon receipt of the final payment. These drawing were received and are totally wrong. He is showing us taking out walls and them putting up a wall in the same place. He has water lines going right through our electric panel. The windows are not as we discussed, several are placed directly under main support beams. For anyone still reading this PLEASE learn from our mistakes. READ READ READ everything in the contract. Have a lawyer review as well so you are not taken advantage of. This was an expensive life

Initial design- horrible, did not take into consideration our wants.   We made multiple trips to his office to rework design.   We had to remind him multiple times that we worked during the day, so all appointments needed to be at the end of the day.  After 6 months finally arrived at a design. 

He approached the Village on Lombard for a grant, WITHOUT our approval.  In fact at the start of the process, he was told specifically that we did not want his assistance with the Village in any way.

Printing costs, over $200 for printing, we were actually able to get copies for less than $50, huge mark up on products.

Failed to timely return phone calls, failed to appropriately address concerns as far as cost.  Would take over a week to return most calls during the design phase.  When questioned about cost, simply stated it will be ok.  Contractor that he works with is a personal friend, that did not provide a professional bid.  It appeared to be scribbled out on a small piece of paper and simply stated, will be built per design.

Charges 10% for all materials used and in fact is estimate for his service was based on materials that were yet to be used so costs will continue to be inflated as the project progresses.  So in addition to the bid price anything that the builder uses will incur a 10% cost to the architect. 

Lack of attention to detail on the drawings cost of extra $1000 for failure to provide bedroom windows that met egress standard.  The opening was large enough however the window that he put into place, was not, therefore we failed inspection, and had to have the windows changed. 

After we fired him and paid for his drawings, we had trouble finding a builder as most said his drawings were challenging to put it nicely.