The first meetings with Jeff were good, and I hired him on the job after talking to two other contractors. HIs bid came in between the two other contractors bids at 44,000, with the exceptions of a few small things that choices needed to be made on. The other contractors bid out the project at 42k, minus the plumbing, which was roughly 8k, and the other came in at 52k for everything. I chose Jeff because he could start the soonest and finish the soonest, and he also had experiences in building luxury town homes. The project started out great, on time and running smoothly. About every other morning I would get a call from Jeff about something that needed a decision to be made on. Surprisingly to me, Jeff was billing me for these conversations. If we moved a dimension of the room, or a doorway, I would be charged. There was nothing even built in this space yet, the changes were just made on paper. Conversations with him totaled up to 470$. The real mess came halfway through the project. I got an invoice for the rest of the project. Along with the 44k original estimate, and the 7k estimate that he had already tried to charge in extras, i got an estimate of 35k to finish the project. As of the moment, my apt was unlivable, and i was paying rent as well as my mortgage. He claimed the estimate that he gave me was up to the drywall stage, and the 35k is for the finishing stage. I am now almost at double my original budget. When I asked him what happened, he claimed that he thought I knew the estimate was only for half of the work. He also admitted to me that he thought that i had no budget, so he treated it like a big construction job, where they charge for every little thing, and top dollar too if I can say. I also asked him "if he knew that it would be around 85k for him to do this job, and I got two other bids at 42+ and 52 all in, why I would hire him?" He had no answer. After our disagreement, I still needed to finish the project, so I had two other contractors tell me how much it was to finish. After I heard their estimates, I knew I was getting ripped off by Jeff. For example: Jeff's two bids on the tiling were 12,400$ and his second estimate was 12,800$; around 21$ per square ft. Something seemed wrong here, so I got two estimates myself from two very repuitable building companies; 6,200, and 5,800$ respectively; 10-11 per sq ft. This is when I fired Jeff. The building company that did the tiling finished off most of the work. The total price to finish it was about 19k, plus another 5k in mistakes that were made by jeff and his men. It cost me a lot more though. I had to pay an extra two months rent in another condo, and I had to miss a ton of work because I became the general contractor. This was one of the worst experiences I have ever had to go through, and I was going to let bygones be bygones, until I had to buy a new bathroom ceiling fan this past weekend and I found out that the fan cost 7.50. I bought my home for 600k and tried to do renovations to upgrade my house and I have the cheapest fan money can buy, which is very loud. The fan is a small thing, but it makes me worried about the other things that jeff did if he was willing to spend so little on a fan. Is the plumbing using the correct materials? Are the walls made out of sturdy frames or cheap frames? For the amount of money that I was spending, I was expecting above average, if not top of the line materials, and I trusted Jeff was using them. I now have hired an inspector to assess the situation. Other little items that he did not finish were the drywall which has insulation sticking out at points and there isn't any in other places(10,000), and the plumbing had to be redone in both bathrooms because it was installed at the incorrect hight (8500). The total cost of my project was over 100k with all of the materials, and this is without knowing what else needs to be redone. I wanted a luxury apt, and Jeff made it seem as though he could do it, but I have come to find out that he was just cutting corners and trying to milk as much money out of me as possible. I am not out about 30k extra, and I am not totally satisfied with the outcome because of Jeff Diez. I am writing this because I would never recommend Jeff to anyone, and I hope that my situation does not happen again. Please feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.