Fiedler Construction

The project started out well. The workers were friendly and work was progressing nicely. We even invited them to stay after and have a beer with them from time to time. There was to be a break for us to paint the walls. Tuesday through Friday. They ran behind and needed Tuesday to still work before we can paint. They didn't tell me this though and I had taken the time off of work so that I could work on the basement. Had they told me beforehand, I would have had time to change my schedule. First thing we noticed when painting was there was very heavy texture on the walls, which was not something we wanted and after being done cannot be easily fixed. The texture was very uneven. Since fixing would've been difficult, we figured we can "learn to live with it" which is a shame when spending this kind of money that we'd be unhappy. Next we saw that they did a bad job of taping and mudding because you can see a definite line of many of the drywall seems. Seeing this despite the texture can tell you how poorly it was done. I brought this to the owner's (Eric) attention and told him to speak with my wife about what can be done. She was at the house and I was not. Work was to resume the following Monday. They were to lay the vinyl floor starting then. Monday, Eric said that he was working on the stairs at the shop. Of course he did have Wed-Fri of the previous week to work on that. No other workers arrived on Monday or Tuesday. They arrived later Wednesday afternoon and cut and painted stairs, which is what Eric had claimed he was doing. So there is a lie there. Thursday afternoon and still no workers so I had to call and ask why a week was just wasted. Eric gave a lot of hemming and hawing and excuse of being busy, which should have been busy in my basement. That spurred them enough to do some more work. As the project is nearing closure, we start to notice that our soda cans are in the trash. So they are stealing soda (at least). In the past, they had asked to buy a soda and told them they didn't have to pay for it and go ahead and have one. This wasn't carte blanch to take whatever they want. My wife saw a cup full of ice water so they also are going through kitchen cabinets until they find what they want. A complete violation of our privacy. They routinely would leave half empty trash around. As the project was near closure, we decided to not bring it up and to end it. The final day of the project, two workers were doing miscellaneous last minute touch ups. One of these things was touch ups of the ceiling(they only did one coat of the dry-fall paint and there were numerous spots to touch up). They said they would do this with a brush. I walked down and he had a can of spray paint, which appeared to be the cheapest generic kind). At the time, I didn't think much of that. Talking with the worker he listed several things that he was going to leave for Eric as he had to leave for a meeting. I asked Eric when he would be arriving and he said that he would be coming after that same 3:30 meeting in an area about 45 minutes or more farther from our house. Shocked I asked how they would finish that day when he wouldn't even arrive until after 5pm and had a list of things that were going to be left for them. That call got them to stay and finally finish that day. Still unresolved was the noticeable line on the walls. I had told him multiple times to discuss this with my wife. He was not on the job site often. Now it is not something that can be fixed. Both Eric and the lead worker/product manager said that if it was their house they would have fixed it. We agreed on taking $300 off, which is extremely light but it was something. Now we are happy to get our house back together. My wife mopped the floor. Socks, mop head, and everything turned coal black. Remember the spray paint? Yep, anybody familiar with spray paint knows that there is a lot of paint that falls on the floor and surrounding areas. Repeated moppings and there is no difference. Scrubbing on hands and knees and no difference. We are afraid our entire flooring is ruined. We bought specific Armstrong cleansers and still everything turns black. Google to the rescue. Hand sanitizer helps clean paint. Now scrubbing with sanitizer over the entire floor (twice). Finally, you can walk on the floor without turning everything black. Estimated $150 in products and 5 days(40hrs) worth of scrubbing between myself and my wife. Thinking Eric may be reasonable about this and not wanting him to ruin other people's floor, I wrote to him about it all. No response. A second email. No response. Not only is he not responding but he has blocked us from his facebook company webpage. However, he is using pictures of our basement and my name on it (friend looked it up). We never gave him permission for to use our pictures and certainly not our name. We gave an inch. They took a mile. I wanted to be reasonable about things and they took advantage of it all. Some of the work they did is really nice. Other portions (walls) are amateurish.