Jim recently worked on my kitchen renovation, and it was a horrible experience. To start with, he never provided me with a contract. He quoted me a price of $6000 for a two week job based on 3D renderings I provided, plus $925 for some additional agreed-upon items (though he included installing the dishwasher, which was already covered), and a week into the project, after gutting my kitchen and before the new base cabinets had all been installed, he told me he underestimated by 100 150% and that I would need to agree to increase the price by $3500, with no room to negotiate, take it or leave it. I wanted to tell him to get lost, but I have a wife and two young kids and cannot not have a kitchen indefinitely. He might as well have had a gun to my head. He took no responsibility for his alleged botched estimate and provided no further breakdown of the extra work necessitating an additional 2-3 days, charging me almost double the average daily rate of the project for the extra days he said he needed. He only brought a second person the first day to help remove the old cabinets. He asked me to help him move a large cabinet into the kitchen when he really should have had someone else assist. Later, after screwing me on the price of the job, he asked for my help again and afterwards joked "Go easy on me on the bill". As if getting ripped off wasn t bad enough, the quality of the work he did was poor. For someone with 40 years of experience, he barely looked at the blueprints and often ignored them, requiring me to show him what needed to be done when I could step away from my own work and requiring rework when I was not available to guide him, putting extra holes into the backs of my cabinets, and wasting time (for which he passed the cost to me). He did not know how to install a dishwasher when there is a stone countertop or the right way to install the soundproofing fins (I had to show him the directions multiple times from the manual). He ignored the instructions for installing the crown molding, which advised using an adhesive, instead using a nail gun and filling in the holes. But he didn t read the instructions on the filler kit either, which explained how to blend it in, so it looks like a child coloured them. And the corners for the crown are all very sloppy. The painting job he did was terrible. He didn t fill in nail holes on the window trim, tape lines were still clearly visible on the walls and ceiling; he missed spackling spots; and he did not get the paint to completely cover the area he painted. And there was not even much surface area to be painted. Now I need to pay someone else to fix it. He also scratched up the top of my new oven due to his overall carelessness. He did not fully tighten the faucet, only trying by hand and failing. And he had no set plan to resolve it, so I will have to pay someone else to do it. He broke an expensive low-voltage dimmer switch and did not tell me. I could go on... When I pointed out damage to the bottom shelf of one of the cabinets, he said he did not know how he might have done it and suggested it came that way. I later realized it was from him using a nail gun to attach a light rail after we discussed that he d use L-brackets to attach them. He knew exactly what caused the damage and lied to my face about it. When Jim changed the price on me, he never revised the original payment plan, which called for a final payment of $2000. I already let him get away with reducing it to $1425, and before finishing the job, he asked for $1000. I told him no, and he was furious and started yelling at me. Fortunately, my kids, who were home at the time, didn t hear him. When his attempt at intimidation didn t work, he switched gears and instead offered an insincere apology. Do yourself a favor and avoid working with Jim unless you re looking to be ripped off, yelled at, lied to, and left having to pay others to fix his shoddy work. B...