COVENANT CONSTRUCTION

Covenant Construction failed in three main areas: 1) Incompetent as a general contractor. They did not manage or oversee subs effectively, including not ensuring the subs completed work to the agreed specifications and in one case completely walking away from managing a sub and forcing me, the homeowner, into managing the sub directly. 2) Craftmanship. They rushed the project and always looked for the easiest rather than the best way to do the work 3) Lack of customer service and accountability. When problems occurred, they did not want to take any responsibility for addressing the issues. They were completely unresponsive, even in "crisis" situations like the new roof leaking and damaging the plaster. They work very set hours (7:30 to 4:30) and essentially turn off their cell phones outside those hours. I assume most people have jobs during those hours and need to be able to communicate with their builder at other times, especially when I am finding issues that need to be addressed. I had to withhold some progress payments until they addressed issues. The following are a sampling of the specific issues I encountered: - failed to mix the concrete to specifications and once concrete is in, it really cannot reasonably be removed and replaced - roof leaked in multiple places - doors leaked in multiple places and they didn't want to reinstall them with better water proofing; they told me all doors leak - left out the rebar from the chimney and luckily caught it before they progressed too far - installed shims between the foundation and the sub floor to make it level but did not put any blocking in place where the wall studs were located to effectively transfer the weight between the walls and the foundation - cut the gable end roof trusses to install windows without installing the necessary blocking and headers - most of the exterior doors they installed would not open and close smoothy - stair stringers inconsistent in the rise between treads - framing around pocket door not sufficient to prevent warping / creating issues of opening and closing the door - specs required cast iron vertical drains, whereas they installed PVC throughout - specs called for copper water pipes; in order to shift costs from them to me, they used a system for connecting the pipes (no soldering) that reduced their labor time (which was a fixed price) but cost an exorbitant amount in materials (which was variable priced)