RONALD DESCHESNE CONTRACTING

It started out lovely. Ron came every day, had a great attitude, and was making good progress. After a few weeks, that changed rapidly. He stopped coming every day, stopped coming on time, and started arguments with us several times regarding things he accused us of changing, though they were things that he had not written down correctly during the bidding process, so he was confusing himself. Also, we had not set a payment schedule, so assumed that we would keep with as the large deposit upfront (which we paid) and the rest upon completion. That wasn't the case. Ron demanded a check once a week, and when we expressed our discomfort in paying him more money than visible progress, he got very upset and laid on the guilt trip, explaining that he could A)not pay his mortgage unless we paid him, or B) could not do another stitch of work or buy another supply unless we gave him a check right then and there. It was very uncomfortable, but we're too nice to let him go without "paying his mortgage." We learned a valuable lesson in that regard, though. It was clear that Ron had other jobs to get to, so he stopped coming altogether after a certain point. Our job was unfinished, and he had a lot more of our money in his pocket than work completed. He promised he would be back in a week, then a few days later, after many phone calls from us, promised the next week, then the day before he was to return, he called and said one more week. I expressed great concern to him, to no avail. Ron returned that following week, but clearly had a large chip on his shoulder. He walked in so I could show him where the materials were to do the main project for that day, and as I was explaining it, his face turned red and puffed up, I swear I could see smoke coming out of his ears and nose, and he looked at me with disdain, and called me a liar. He said I had never told him those things, that I kept changing things on him. Nothing was changed. I explained this project to him, very clearly, with my husband, in the bidding process. He clearly wrote it down wrong. But I didn't want someone with that sort of attitude working on that project, so I told him to forget it, let's move on to finishing the sunroom. Throughout his progress in the sunroom, he broke one of our windows completely. Feeling bad for him and his apparent money troubles, we told him we would pay for the window at the agreed price of $10-20. But that last day, he demanded I give him $40 right then and there to cover the window. I asked for a receipt, since the price had changed, and that send him over the edge. He completely lost it, accused me of not trusting him, of lying to him, and many other expletives. It was a Ron I had never seen before. I let him go, because I felt very threatened and uncomfortable with him being in our house. He later left a threatening VM on my husband's cell phone saying, "DO NOT ANNOY ME, I DON'T WANT THIS TO GET UGLY."