Gary Van Meter Builder

Right from the beginning things were not done in a timely manner.  New basement section was left open for at least a month to all the wind and leaves and rain in the fall.  Nothing was ever covered with a tarp.  Therefore brand new cement floor was stained and nasty before it was ever available for use.  When opening was cut from old part of basement to new part of basement the existing window glass was not removed and therefore broke and was just left all over the floor for me to clean up weeks later when I was allowed access.

Workers did not show up at all some days.  Several times I called the owner to ask questions on the progress and he said they were there right then working, but sadly I was at home and no one had been there all day.  He had nothing to say.

Nothing was put up on the existing six foot opening from old part of the house to new part, to stop dust and dirt from just floating everywhere in the existing house.  After several days of this happening I had to ask why this was happening and I was told that I never asked to have plastic put up to stop this from happening.  Really?

The addition was adding on to an existing bedroom, a bathroom and a small family room area.

After the bedroom addition was all done, real oak hardwood flooring, painting and what ever else was completely done, the workers then brought in their saw horses and saws and started cutting all the stuff to work on the bathroom and family room.  This included wood, "marble type sheeting" for the new shower walls, wallboard and all the remaining trim.  So all this dust was spread all over the newly finished bedroom.  I asked about this and why they weren't cutting all this outside on the roof covered deck.  They told me it was too cold to run their saw and too cold to cut the stuff they had to cut.  I later learned from the supplier they outright lied to me.

I provided the handles for the cupboards in the bedroom and the bathroom.  Bedroom was brass and bathroom was pewter.  I personally handed them the handles in separate groups and said that one set was 3 inches wide and one was 3 1/2 inches wide.  They drilled all of them the 3 1/2 inches wide and then had to fill in all the holes that were wrong and re-drill them.  I accepted the "filled holes" that were on the bottom cupboards and drawers, but I wanted to have the upper doors replaced as the holes were at eye level and looked crappy.  There were 6 doors that had to be replaced.  The owner was quite irritated with my request as he said that came out of his own money.  The replacement doors were delivered to my house within two weeks but he did not come to install them for another month.

When the heat had to be turned on, apparently the venting of the furnace was not completed correctly and by Saturday morning we had headaches and the carbon monoxide detector went off several times.  I called the owner and he was annoyed that I called on the weekend but finally said he would come over and look at it.  He tore out part of the new floor and ran another pipe outside for a temporary fix.

I was home the day (a Friday) the plumber came to layout his plan and asked me where I wanted stuff and at what height.  The plumber made all of his markings on the wall studs and nailed up some of his "fittings".  When he came back later the next week to do the actual pipe fitting, he followed what he thought was what we had discussed.  In the meantime, unknown to me and I guess unknown to the plumber, the owner changed things to how he wanted them.  He never discussed any of this with me.  Because of all the extra work the plumber would have to do and to further delay finishing the project, I just accepted what was already done.

When checking out things the builder said were finished I found that the stopper in the bathroom sink was not holding water for more than a few seconds.  I asked about this and he tried it himself.  He laughed and his first answer was, "well how long do you need to have water in the sink anyway".  My answer is "as long as I want it to be there".  This is all brand new parts and plumbing.  All new in box parts.  Then he said he would have to take it all apart and go back to the store and get another new one.  I told him it was all brand new and to do whatever it took, but I wanted the stopper to hold water as long as I needed it there.

Because my house was added on to, a whole new roof structure was required.  I recently found out that the shingles they put up there are not spaced correctly.  When I asked the new person looking at my roof (a licensed builder) why they would have done that and he said either they did not know what they were doing or they were going to run out of shingles and spaced them further apart than what they should be.  He said it shouldn't leak for now, but it should be checked in a few years.

And the reason I was having another builder go onto the roof was because he needed to replace the cover to the skylight.  Gary Van Meter installed a solar "panel" (a round solar light thing) in my old bathroom and they did not put any screws into the pipe to hold the cover on.  So when the windstorm came, it blew the cover off and smashed it into bits on the ground.  And then of course the hard rain came into the solar tube and into my bathroom and that was when I noticed something was wrong. 

Then after the builder said it was all done and I could use everything (which was 6 months later), I found several disturbing things.  There are probably 8 nails, that were immediately noticeable, that were sticking down from the ceiling wallboard along the wall wallboard.  There was a gap at least an inch tall and 5 inches long underneath the window trim.  The wallboard was just plain not there.  And the owners wife also "wiped down" everything in the all the rooms.  Now how could one miss that?    This was "repaired" and repainted but it looks like crap.  The wallboard patch shows and the paint is obviously a different finish.

I repeatedly asked that all the floors were going to be the same height.  When they got to the last room (the family room) to work on the floor I asked that same question again.  This room had 3 openings.  6 foot wide opening to the kitchen, 3 foot opening to a bathroom, and the patio door which they installed.  The bathroom and kitchen had vinyl floors.  The family room was having a laminate floor installed.  When I asked again (probably the 20th time) about the floor height being the same, by the builder, I was gruffly told that in order to have the floors all the same height they would have to use 3/4 inch plywood and that was going to cost more than whatever he had planned on using.  The floors were finished at the same height.  But if I had not been very ugly about this, I would have had 3 places for people to catch their toes every time they walked through that room.  The room is 8 feet by 12 feet.

The basement is under all the addition.  The new basement area has about a 12 inch "frame" around it which is the same height as the existing basement floor.  However, inside that 12 inch frame area, about 10 feet by 28 feet, the cement floor is at least 8 inches lower.  So you have to step up or down to use that part of the basement.  I was told that was the way it was.  I did not realize it was going to be finished that way, nor do I understand why.  They had plenty of fill dirt to make that floor be level with the existing floor.  They later hauled it all away, so why couldn't they use it to fill that in and make all the floor level.

They reworked my deck so they replaced some of the handrail.  Instead of replacing an entire 10 foot piece of hand rail, they pieced it togeth

unknown

unknown

I was willing to do a lot of the work myself, but I didn't dare attempt to replace the tub & shower walls.... especially the plumbing. We got new fixtures and they installed them as well. Once I saw what they had to go through to install and make all of the new parts work, I'm glad I let them do it. The walls were not quite plumb, so they had to do some fancy cutting to get everything in place and looking correct. The plumbing was a pain, but they updated it to get it working properly. They have a lot of experience and can handle any unforseen issue smoothly and without complaint. They even patched a few old scuffs in the drywall while they were doing the tub work as a bonus. Very well done.