Lundberg Builders Inc
About us
Additional E-mail - [email protected]. Additional contact name - Chris Holmes. [email protected] additional contact name - Bob Moreland. Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist
Business highlights
Services we offer
Design, custom project, green building, home maintenance including preventative maintenance, remodeling, renovation, repair service & any other maintenance or handy man.
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
---|---|---|
0% | ||
0% | ||
33% | ||
33% | ||
33% |
This nightmare should have been apparent early on, but we were naive and trusting. Lundberg's cost-plus contract is written to allow him complete latitude with respect to his hourly rate employees and he ruthlessly demonstrated the dangers of that. Although we were very explicit about our budget, it was obvious from the outset with his designer (Bob Mooreland) that their game was to produce billable hours, not a finished product within an agreed upon budget.
Our first bill from them was for $5000 for Mooreland's time drawing a design that we had not seen, not accepted, and did not want. We realized that he would drain our coffers if we let him randomly generate designs so we asked that he not draft anything until we had agreed upon a sound design. This proved to be folly because he would not provide rough cost estimates based on square footage. It became "Catch 22" trying to create something that could be assured of meeting our budget when we could not determine how much that something would cost. At one point, they allowed us to conceptualize, and then draft plans for a house that they later came back and said would cost more than twice what we had budgeted. Again the process was not about designing or building it was about generating bills. After months of frustration and nearly $20,000 down the drain we were still at square one and were going to walk away, but Lundberg asked for a meeting at which we made changes to the design that he said would meet the budget, so we foolishly agreed to continue with them.
The building process was worse. On the promise that if we accomplished work ourselves we would see a cost savings we did much of the demolition and ground clearing, but never saw any credit for it. Anything that Lundberg had direct control over rapidly ran out of control and over budget. His supervisor's time alone exceeded the entire budgeted amount in several areas. His carpenters billed for entire days of work, yet the project dragged on and on. We were renting a house near by so it was convenient to stop in and check on the "progress'. Some days it was hard to tell that anything had been done, yet the hourly bills kept coming. With the framing barely half way done, the budget for that area had already been exausted. Strangely though, the subs (electrical, foundation, plumbing...) not working directly for Lundberg were essentially on budget. When questioned about why his bills we were so far off the mark, we were told that it was due to front-loaded costs, such as building materials and that it would even out in the end. as mentioned earlier we repeatedly asked for explanations and proposals for resolution, but none came. At Lundberg's suggestion we began to withhold money for his overbilling, while cointinuing to pay the subs.
After exausting all options and finally accepting that we had been played, we had to fire them. I suspect Lundberg not only expected this but planned for it. In our opinion the idea to withold payment to him was another stall tactic used to keep him on the job so that he could continue to get his cut of the subs work. Shortly after being fired his attorney filed for a mechanics lein for the money we had withheld. That whole legal process was an even bigger nightmare, but it all would have been avoided if we'd gone with our instinct regarding the open-ended contract, or acted on the signs that were abundant early and not gotten involved with Lundberg or terminated them early on. We have learned some valuable lessons from this ordeal, the most important of which being never get involved with Lundberg Builders.
Licensing
State Contractor License Requirements
All statements concerning insurance, licenses, and bonds are informational only, and are self-reported. Since insurance, licenses and bonds can expire and can be cancelled, homeowners should always check such information for themselves. To find more licensing information for your state, visit our Find Licensing Requirements page.
*Contact business to see additional licenses.