Weatherproofing

Took initial deposit and disappeared for about a month. His employees (who did not speak English) finished the roofing in about one day. Jim had explicitly said when I asked that he would be doing all the work himself but he subcontracted all the work except the roofing (which was done by his employees) to others. He never provided the names of any of the subcontractors. He also never provided copies of any of the bills from them. In fact he never provided copies of any bills for anything, including purchased materials. Jim made numerous promises both to me and to the painter with whom he was supposed to be coordinating his work(e.g., that he would have certain work completed by a certain date, that he would provide me with copies of all bills, that he would include the removal of pre-existing yard debris in the job, that he would put copper roofing on part of the house to make up for his being unresponsive and out of touch for so long, that he would include cleaning the gutters at the end of the job) which he did not keep. Jim cut every possible corner, including trying to rebuild the chimney six feet shorter than it had been (and when I objected, he claimed that the height "met code" and said he'd rebuilt it shorter because he didn't want me to have to worry about its "blowing down in the wind" !!! ). Jim was EXTREMELY uncooperative with the painter, resulting in my having to pay for the materials and labor to paint a portion of the house unnecessarily. Most egregiously, Jim refused to complete work on a portion of roof he removed and the wall under it, because the work turned out to be more complicated than he'd expected when giving me a quote. His manner of handling this complication resulted in my losing this room on my house, which has reduced my property value considerably. When you first meet him, Jim seems like a very nice guy and he makes a very good first impression, but his follow through is terrible and, at least in my case, he promises way more than he is able or willing to do, and in fact one of the subcontractors working for him said that Jim often bites off more than he can chew. I will say, though, that except for the very big problem with the lost room, the quality of the work he and his subcontractors did was very good, with the exception of the gutters (which he promised to fix but didn't --- another of his broken promises).