Rod Hill is a really nice guy and he was terrific to work with at first. I provided him with a long list of major and quot;to-dosand quot; in my home, including two bathrooms, a kitchen, fixing our front porch, building a deck, installing pot lighting fixtures and lots of other, more minor home renovations.
We agreed that the first project would be the master bathroom. After I got renderings done and presented to the town for permits, we shopped together for all the fixtures, tiles, etc. He performed all installations, including flooring, walls, wainscotting, tiling, plumbing, electrical from start to finish. However, he was balancing several projects at once and I often received calls asking if I could wait a week or so while he completed another project which was he said was urgent usually as a result of hurricane Sandy. How could I be anything but understanding? However, the estimated time frame of start to end of the bathroom project became completely off not by weeks but by months. By the end I wondered if I should have been less of a pushover as what was supposed to be a one month project took 8 months from start to finish instead.
Rod stayed within budget, which was a bit high but he was a friend of a friend and so I felt he certainly wouldn't screw me over so I was agreeable. Things began to unravel when I discovered that the corner of a major marble element of the bathroom had been chipped off, which would be difficult to repair and expensive to replace. He stated that I must have broken it somehow or someone else who had been in the bathroom after they had left. When I suggested he or one of his helpers (who were his son and father in law) may have accidentally broken the marble while they were painting the bathroom that day (having maneuvered ladders, full cans of paint and other equipment in the room), Rod became irate, and insisted his son would have told him had that happened. I honestly didn't care how it happened, I just wanted it to be fixed and I didn't feel it would be fair to pay for the repair as I had not broken it.
Thankfully Rod was able to find a solution and ultimately fixed it and did not charge me for the repair. However he treated me differently after that incident. The smiling and joking and collaboration stopped that day.
As we wrapped up the master bathroom project, I reminded him of other projects he had agreed to do with me, however, once he got his last payment, he stopped returning calls about when those projects would begin.
I then learned that he had spoken to my next door neighbors and had agreed to begin several projects at their home within the next two weeks. I left him a text message that I understood he was going to be doing some work next door but that I would hope he would complete my projects first and that my neighbors were agreeable to wait. He never returned the text and never followed up with my neighbors. After that, he disappeared from my neighborhood. I did see his truck in town a few weeks later, working on a house that was damaged by Sandy.
I have since found another contractor who is tackling my other projects. It was very unfortunate how things worked out with Remodel Plus as I felt Rod's workmanship was top notch and he was able to do it all. If he had other projects that he felt would take precedence or that he no longer wanted to work with me, it would have been more professional if he had simply told me that.