Jan Miller Carpentry

After he removed all the exterior wood from my porch and received my deposit, he increased the orig.bid. This included fixing the area he damaged prev, some touching up in another closet, and fixing and painting a closet that was in the orig bid. I objected, saying, that I wasn't going to pay twice for the same thing, or pay for what he damaged, and it was getting too cold to paint and caulk outside. He told me that he works yr round outside, and that he can paint and caulk in any weather. He really wanted the job bc he said that he had lost money on the roof job. I had to have any work being work done by mid-Dec bc of vacation that I had already rescheduled mult x's bc of him, school would out and my kids would be home, holidays, etc. He "promised" that he would finish in 2 wks. By the end of 2 wks, hardly anything had been done. When I reminded him that he only had 2 wks to finish, he became very angry and refused to work that day. He called me at work the next day and verbally abused me for 20 min and said that it normally takes him 3 mos per job. I wanted to fire him, but I had already given him $5000. Again, he promised that he would be finished and that it would be show quality. His wife, who I work with, reassured me that he was very good at what he does and that it would be done perfectly. I liked, trusted, and admired her, so let him continue. In spite of his obvious hostility, we continued to be nice and gracious to him. He harassed my kids w/ his disgruntlements, even though I had previously talked to him about this. He used my garage, driveway, kitchen, bathroom, and laundry rm for 2 mos, leaving them trashed and damaged. He was very careless, and destructive. Even though I told him that my lawn had been newly seeded, he drove his truck around and parked on it. We had to park on the street most of the time, while his trucks were parked in the driveway. He scratched the side of my truck when it was parked in the driveway. Even though he worked thru Dec 15, he left a lot unfinished. He refused to do the other things he had agreed to do for the original price, but it didn't matter bc he was out of time. Based upon this, we agreed upon the final check, but this was before I was able to inspect any of his work, (we were going out of town.) He wanted his $ before xmas, and I didn't want to withhold it. However, I was horrified when I did inspect it shortly after that, when we got home. I tried to call him, but he had already cashed his check and never returned my calls. He had paint and caulk all over the brick. There were places he left unpainted, places that were rotting bc he painted over wet wood, places where the wood was splitting, paint that was peeling. His repairs were all very visible, even though his specialty is carpentry. He only patched the huge leak in the bonus rm instead of replacing the drywall; same in the closet.