First Class Remodeling & Painting

We signed a contract on 7/14/17 and the job was just completed on 9/22/17 (we were given an approximate completion time of 2 weeks). There were multiple issues during the project, but the most notable were the following: - Ismael originally advised us that we did not need to go through the permitting process, and that we could save $2,500 if we decided to not abide by Montgomery County construction regulations. We decided that we needed to do this job by the book so we hired an architect to draft the design and submit the paperwork to the county. We loved the design and were excited to see the completed project.... - For the first few days of the project, everything seemed to be going well. Then we noticed that Ismaels workers would show up in the afternoon and work for maybe 3/4 hours. The only times we ever saw Ismael was when he would come to the house because he asked us for a check. We noticed that the deck didn't look anything like the design we agreed upon so we had to constantly call Ismael and tell him that what they were building was not what we agreed upon. We paid for a General Contract and Ismael was anything but that. - Eventually, most of the design issues were corrected and it finally looked like we would be getting the deck we paid for.... However, because of all the issues we had to correct, it took more time and that meant he owed his guys more money so he wanted this job to be completed ASAP. So they started cutting corners and neglected to complete one set of stairs and did a very poor job on another set of stairs. In the beginning, we told Ismael that the stairs we currently had were falling apart and they needed to be ripped out and replaced with new wood. He simply laid new wood on the existing steps and said he had done his job. Also, when I called him out on the stairs that were never done, he simply said his job was done and made up some ******** about a county code preventing him from doing the steps. We eventually just wanted to be done with Ismael and his team so we just paid him and accepted that we DID NOT get what we paid for. I highly discourage anyone from using First Class Remodeling and Painting.