Marvin Taylor

It was awful, but before I go into my details I want to warn homeowners that Mr. Taylor is a black man in his early 40's and drives a light green minivan with no plates on the front. He told me he is from Webster Groves, MO and lives at 120 Dornell. He told me he does a lot of work in the Webster area; particular at the large older homes but I couldn't get any references out of him. He seems to be a nice person but overly friendly and too familiar for a new acquaintance. It's been suggested to me that he probably got in over his head and I was going to be paying for some new learning experiences for him. We started off with $1500 paid to him to start the carport roof repair but, because it rained off and on and he needed some consecutive dry days I understood he couldn't work all the time. He impressed me with his dedication; showing up during a hard rain to put up tarp to keep the new wood dry. I paid him additional money to replant a tree in my front yard to a spot that I specified but he dug a hole where he thought he could convince me to have it placed. He agreed that I had specified where I wanted the tree and he was going to refill the hole which he never got around to doing. Within the first couple of weeks of him working on the roof my basement flooded during heavy rains and I gave him money to rent a snake and clean out my drains; he did that OK. A clean up company removed the carpet and sanitized my basement and I gave Mr. Taylor more money to take out the tile and clean the floors and he did OK on that part too. In the meantime he started to clean my windows. He took the storm windows off my floor to ceiling front windows and then wouldn't put them back on because he said my windows needed to be reglazed and he would not do a job if it couldn't be done right. He also wanted to repaint everything and convinced me it was the best thing to do while he was working on the windows anyway. He sanded the paint off the aluminum casings around the storm windows. He took the window and screen inserts out of my carport storm door and didn't repair and put them back in either. It continued to rain off and on but he always had an excuse for not being able to finish any of the outside work whenever we did have a couple of successive dry days. During the span of 5 weeks he kept needing more money to buy supplies, tools, etc. and he had me backed into a corner because of all the unfinished jobs that weren't getting done. When I had paid him a total of $2,460, I told him to leave and not come back; I was afraid he would start more projects that might never get finished. He said that I actually owed him more money but he would finish the carport roof. I was very uncomfortable with him at that point so I gave him a letter he wanted that relieved him from doing any further work on my property. When he took his tools from my carport he also took the building materials he had purchased. A contractor (friend of a friend) looked at the carport roof and said the work that had been completed was shoddy and would be dangerous to anyone who put any weight on that part of the roof, say while cleaning out the gutters. All the work has to be redone. The bottom line on Mr. Marvin Taylor is he will impress you with how much he says he knows and how well he cleans and tidies up after he does some work. The work he is good at; cleaning and painting and digging, is done very well but everything else is questionable based on the current state of mess that my house and yard are in. He doesn't keep a regular schedule and usually shows up a couple of hours after he's expected. He's a talker and always on the phone or visiting if someone stops by. He will always need more money and when asked, he won't tell you how much something is going to cost. Aside from the initial $1,500 I gave him and for which he did give me an itemized bill, he would not commit to the cost or time frame for any other work he planned to do. If you can get him to do the work before you pay him, you might be a happy customer. Good luck.