HOME SOLUTIONS

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This guy is a regular con man, a crook. We called him to give us an estimate on repairing our front porch steps. When he came out, he pulled off all the steps and proceeded to show my wife how all the wood from underneath was rotting. He asked if we wanted to just replace the posts, risers, and treads to make it look better, mentioning that the stringers, etc. would eventually need replacing. We all agreed that it didn't make sense to have to rip everything up later to repair the structure from underneath. My wife even told him she didn't want to just "slap a Band-Aid" on it. He went on about himself and how he works alone because it's been very difficult for him to find good subs. He spoke about a huge Victorian estate home he had rehabbed in Flossmoor, Illinois and all the detailed craftsmanship he put into it...said his company motto was "Quality Prevails." Later that night he dropped off a contract to repair the steps with new materials and haul away the old stuff. The price for labor, materials, and clean up seemed fair and it sounded like he was qualified, so we signed the contract. He wanted half of the money up front - cash only - for materials and he said it would take him a day. He also said he'd paint the posts to match the rest of the railing that my wife had just painted - no extra charge - as long as we supplied the paint. Nice guy right? On the day he started, he called my wife out several times to show her how the original contractor cut corners and he pointed out that guy's shoddy work. He said he's never done things like that and believes in integrity. At one point she needed to leave to go to the store and then pick up our kids from school. He said he should just be finishing up by the time she got back. Sure enough, he was packing his things up when she returned, as promised. He told her he needed to talk to her about a few things. He told her not to touch the posts as they were freshly painted and still wet. He showed her how he cut one of the steps wrong and nailed it down temporarily and how some of the stone facing had cracked and fell off the front of the porch when he was removing the sides of the steps. He then told her that the cedar tone lumber that he was using was out of stock but he special ordered some and would be back to fix everything when it came in. He told her the "bad news" was that he was getting ready to leave to do a project for his daughter in California and would be gone for 5 weeks. He said he'd call when he got back and told my wife he expected to get paid for the work he finished. He told her he wanted $600. I'm kicking myself for not being there that day. I wouldn't have given him a dime. Long story short, everytime we called him after that, he had an excuse as to why he couldn't come out....it was too cold outside, he was sick, etc. He even had the nerve to tell us he came up with a new bid for the cost to fix the stone that HE broke! The kicker was when we noticed after the paint dried and the posts started to crack, that he hadn't replaced them with new materials at all. It was the same deteriorating, rotting wood, caulked and painted up to look like new. Needless to say, when we called him on it, he stopped answering his phone. This guy is not a man of his word!  We were totally deceived and are taking him to court for "taking us to the cleaners!" DO NOT HIRE PAUL DANCHO OF HOME SOLUTIONS!!!!